When implementing defensive pessimism, individuals set low expectations for their performance, regardless of how well they have done in the past.

Defensive pessimism can be reduced to a three-step mental rehearsal.

This deliberate and structured focus on dark contingencies is known as defensive pessimism.

Beyond managing anxiety, defensive pessimism is further motivated by a desire for high achievement.

We learn that expecting to fail - or "defensive pessimism" - is not a bad strategy for success, at least in the short run.

The difference between self-handicapping and defensive pessimism lies in the motivation behind the strategies.

While defensive pessimism may have implications for self-esteem, it appears that these effects lessen over time.

Prefactual thinking is an essential component of defensive pessimism.

Individuals use defensive pessimism as a strategy to prepare for anxiety provoking events or performances.

In research, defensive pessimism is frequently contrasted with strategic optimism, another cognitive strategy.

Defensive pessimism, on the other hand, utilizes the foresight of negative situations in order to prepare against them.

Defensive pessimism is a cognitive strategy identified by Nancy Cantor and her students in the mid-1980s.

"She uses defensive pessimism as a tool to work through all the possibilities so she's prepared for everything, even failure," Sanna says.

A social psychologist from Wellesley College in Massachusetts has even produced a study on "defensive pessimism."

Defensive pessimism is utilized in a variety of domains, and public speaking provides a good example of the process involved in this strategy.

Elliot and Church found that the self-handicapping strategy undermined goal achievement while defensive pessimism aided achievement.

Elliot and Church (2003) determined that people adopt defensive pessimism or self-handicapping strategies for the same reason: to deal with anxiety provoking situations.

That kind of blanket hopelessness defies agency, the exact opposite of what defensive pessimism does, with its deliberate, detailed planning.

Defensive pessimism is generally related to lower self-esteem since the strategy involves self-critique, pessimism, and discounting previous successful performances.

Unlike pessimism, defensive pessimism is not an internal, global, and stable attribution style, but rather a cognitive strategy utilized within the context of certain goals.

Julie K. Norem, a psychologist and professor at Wellesley College, calls this defensive pessimism.

As defensive pessimism is motivated by a need to manage anxiety, it is unsurprisingly also correlated with trait anxiety and neuroticism.

Defensive pessimism is an adaptive strategy for those who struggle with anxiety: their performance decreases if they are unable to appropriately manage and counteract their anxiety.

The self-esteem of optimists had not changed, and the self-esteem of pessimists who did not employ defensive pessimism had fallen slightly by the end of college.

This may be in part because people engage in more defensive pessimism in advance of important outcomes, in an attempt to reduce the disappointment that follows overly optimistic predictions.