Public-domain IPIP items — not the LOT-R (Life Orientation Test-Revised), which its authors license for research and teaching only.
Are You an Optimist or a Pessimist? Free 10-Question Test
Free 10-question optimism test using the public-domain IPIP dispositional optimism scale. Find out in 2 minutes whether your default outlook leans optimistic or pessimistic, with a five-band score and two subscales.
What is the Optimism & Pessimism Test?
Dispositional optimism is the general expectation that good things will happen more often than bad ones. It is not the same as being cheerful or thinking positively on demand: it is a stable leaning in how you read an uncertain future, and it tends to hold steady across situations rather than moving with your day.
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This test uses the 10-item Optimism scale from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), a public-domain item set built to measure the same construct as Scheier, Carver and Bridges' work on dispositional optimism. It reports an internal consistency of Alpha = .86. Six of the ten items are reverse-keyed, so agreeing with every statement does not push the score in one direction.
Your result is a five-band score from Braced for the Worst through to Strongly Optimistic, plus two subscales that split the construct: Positive Outlook, which is what you expect to happen, and Emotional Steadiness, which is the mood baseline underneath that expectation. The gap between the two is often the more interesting number, because steady-but-not-hopeful and hopeful-but-not-steady are different profiles that can land in the same band.
Closely related on JobCannon: Grit Test, Locus of Control, Stress Check-In (PSS-4), Burnout Risk Assessment, and Self-Esteem Test.
What You'll Discover
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