Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

The Life Orientation Test–Revised
Use the following scale to answer the items below:
0 
1 
2 
3 
4
Strongly 
disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly 
agree
1. In uncertain times, I usually expect the best.
2. It’s easy for me to relax.
3. If something can go wrong for me, it will.
4. I’m always optimistic about my future.
5. I enjoy my friends a lot.
6. It’s important for me to keep busy.
7. I hardly ever expect things to go my way.
8. I don’t get upset too easily.
9. I rarely count on good things happening to me.
10. Overall, I expect more good things to happen to me than bad.
Scoring.
First, reverse your answers to questions 3, 7, and 9. Do this by changing a 0 to a 4, a 1 to 
a 3, a 3 to a 1, and a 4 to a 0 (answers of 2 stay as 2). Then sum the reversed scores, and add 
them to the scores you gave to questions 1, 4, and 10. (Ignore questions 2, 5, 6, and 8, which are 
fi ller items.)
The total score you get is a measure of a particular orientation to life: your degree of 
optimism. The higher your scores, the more positive and hopeful you generally are about life. For 
comparison purposes the average score for college students is 14.3, according to the results of a 
study by Scheier, Carver, and Bridges (1994). People with a higher degree of optimism generally 
deal with stress better than do those with lower scores.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality 
Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) 
A widely used 
self-report test that identifi es people 
with psychological diffi culties and is 
employed to predict some everyday 
behaviors.
self-report measures 
A method of 
gathering data about people by asking 
them questions about a sample of their 
behavior.
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