Optimism,coping style and emotional well‐being in cardiac patients

Objective. Optimism is associated with superior emotional well‐being in people with chronic and acute health problems, possibly because optimists are more likely to implement problem‐focused coping. Another interpretation posits that optimism can be a defensive response designed to diminish affective reactions to health problems. The study objective is to investigate this possibility. Design. A cross‐sectional examination of relationships between dispositional and relative optimism, threat avoidance and emotional well‐being in 85 cardiac patients. Results. Blunting, a measure of threat avoidance, was found to be associated with both optimism and emotional well‐being, and the common variance was predictive of positive affect. As expected, this link was stronger in people with low self‐efficacy for problem‐focused coping. Conclusion. These findings support a defensive interpretation of optimism amongst patients with recently‐experienced cardiac disease, particularly as the effect was more pronounced in the low self‐efficacy subsample. We discuss possible explanations for these findings and implications for the study of coping with serious illness.