Open AccessOptimism in Portuguese Adolescents: The Role of Anxiety and Positive Affect
Author(s) -
Fábio M.R.R. Gonçalves,
Joana Vieira dos Santos,
Luís Sérgio Vieira
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
universitas psychologica/universitas psychologica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.22
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 2011-2777
pISSN - 1657-9267
DOI - 10.11144/javeriana.upsy19.opar
Subject(s) - optimism , psychology , anxiety , negative affectivity , affect (linguistics) , coping (psychology) , portuguese , clinical psychology , predictive power , positive affectivity , developmental psychology , social psychology , psychiatry , linguistics , philosophy , communication , epistemology
The higher prevalence of anxiety and depression disorders in children and adolescents and the persistence of these disorders in adulthood show how important it is to investigate these concepts. Simultaneously, if we better understand the antecedents of, for example, anxiety, it will be more advantageous to define and implement some programs specifically for those ages. Like in adults, some investigations propose to study the effect of anxiety on optimism on samples of children or adolescents. In this study, we analyze the relations between anxiety, optimism, and affect in a sample of 155 students (mean age = 12 years). We took a particular interest in investigating the direction of influence between anxiety and optimism. The results showed a positive association between positive affect and anxious coping, and predictive power of these variables in explaining optimism, which seems to result from a contribution equivalent to that described on the two-factor structure of affectivity.