No, it’s not another lawyer joke. Findlaw posted this piece, called The Unique Psychological World of Lawyers on their site, which examines lawyer profiles, as indicated by the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and other similar tests. Results were analyzed Martin Seligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder of the school of Positive Psychology, which focuses on attributes and behaviors that produce success and happiness, has identified optimism as a critical attribute for both.
Seligman found consistent correlations for in only one career type -- lawyering. And the attribute? Pessimism. Pessimism was so highly correlated with success in lawyers that the higher the pessimism in law students, the higher their grades. Dr. Seligman points out that while pessimism is evidently a positive attribute for the practice of law, it can have profound effects on the individuals high in that quality, affecting their resilience and personal and professional relationships, for example. Other attributes that lawyers test very high in are urgency (sense of immediacy or impatience) and autonomy (prizing independence). Attributes lawyers test particularly low in are resilience (processing feedback and recovering from defeat) and sociability (interacting with others and initiating intimate connections).
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