Word: seligmans
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...debate inside the White House about whether Clinton should testify was tightly limited to six lawyers: Kendall, Ruff, Bennett, associate counsel Cheryl Mills, Kendall's colleague Nicole Seligman and Mickey Kantor. Each morning the inner circle met by conference call, with out-of-body participation by Kantor, calling in from Hong Kong. The instincts of Kendall had always been for Clinton to say as little as possible for as long as possible. None of the more political-minded advisers, such as Kantor and Bennett, could overcome Kendall's doctrine that no news was good news. Kendall often said little during...
Some aspects of emotional intelligence, however, can be quantified. Optimism, for example, is a handy measure of a person's self-worth. According to Martin Seligman, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, how people respond to setbacks--optimistically or pessimistically--is a fairly accurate indicator of how well they will succeed in school, in sports and in certain kinds of work. To test his theory, Seligman devised a questionnaire to screen insurance salesmen at MetLife...
...Seligman's test, job applicants were asked to imagine a hypothetical event and then choose the response (A or B) that most closely resembled their own. Some samples from his questionnaire...
...Seligman found that those insurance salesmen who answered with more B's than A's were better able to overcome bad sales days, recovered more easily from rejection and were less likely to quit. People with an optimistic view of life tend to treat obstacles and setbacks as temporary (and therefore surmountable). Pessimists take them personally; what others see as fleeting, localized impediments, they view as pervasive and permanent...
...most dramatic proof of his theory, says Seligman, came at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, after U.S. swimmer Matt Biondi turned in two disappointing performances in his first two races. Before the Games, Biondi had been favored to win seven golds--as Mark Spitz had done 16 years earlier. After those first two races, most commentators thought Biondi would be unable to recover from his setback. Not Seligman. He had given some members of the U.S swim team a version of his optimism test before the races; it showed that Biondi possessed an extraordinarily upbeat attitude. Rather...