Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 July 2014
Some studies have suggested that personality factors are important to optimismdevelopment. Others have emphasized that family relations are relevant variablesto optimism. This study aimed to evaluate the importance of parenting styles tooptimism controlling for the variance accounted for by personality factors.Participants were 344 Brazilian high school students (44% male) with mean age of16.2 years (SD = 1) who answered personality,optimism, responsiveness and demandingness scales. Hierarchical regressionanalyses were conducted having personality factors (in the first step) andmaternal and paternal parenting styles, and demandingness and responsiveness (inthe second step) as predictive variables and optimism as the criterion.Personality factors, especially neuroticism (β= –.34, p < .01), extraversion(β = .26, p< .01) and agreeableness (β =.16, p < .01), accounted for 34% of the optimismvariance and insignificant variance was predicted exclusively by parental styles(1%). These findings suggest that personality is more important to optimismdevelopment than parental styles.