Most of us are aware of “Is the glass half full or half empty?” test. If you pick the former, you’re an “optimist”; otherwise, you’re a “pessimist”. It’s not a black-or-white test, but it can measure how one sees life.

According to psychologist Lissy Ann Puno, most of us grow up wanting to be an optimist-a person who can see the good in any situation and can stay hopeful when facing challenges. For some people, though, life happens and they start to see the glass half-empty instead. Pessimists tend to see the wrong in every situation, and blame external factors and circumstances when things aren’t going their way.

Being continuously fed with bad news and disappointments can turn optimistic children into adults that are critical of almost everything. For some, the shift becomes easier,being raised by pessimistic parents. Others still remain optimistic, thanks to a positive household growing up.

“This is why developing optimism in young children is significant for their development as adults,” said Lissy Ann. If adopted at an early age, this powerful personality quality can help children grow into strong adults capable of handling life’s circumstances with confidence, courage, and hope. What parent wouldn’t want that for their children?

“Children are seen as natural optimists,” Lissy Ann said. They come into this world with unbiased (无偏见的) eyes and a pure heart that hasn’t been influenced by social expectations, life experiences, severe mental shock, or authority figures yet. Whether a child grows up to be optimistic or not is part genetic and part environmental. “Childhood experiences, parent-child connection, or authority figures will all have some influence,” she said. Although optimism (or the lack of it) could be passed down genetically, it can also be taught.

Having friends is obviously good for countless reasons. And showing the world that you have lots of friends, for example on social media, seems like a winning strategy. If that is the truth, your goal is to expand your social network. Once people see how popular you are, they'll want to join that popular circle, perhaps in the hope that some of your popularity will rub off on them.

Nevertheless, can a person even have too many friends at the same time? It’s always been a misconception that if you have more friends, people will be more likely to want to be friends you.

In fact, a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that having too many friends may work against you. In a series of experiments. the authors prove that people usually prefer to befriend those who have fewer friends than they do, rather than those with more friends. The authors call this phenomenon the “friend-number paradox(悖论)”, which is also the title of their new paper.

Social ties are obviously important. Having more of these connections suggests greater social value, and more potential possibilities. So it seems reasonable to assume that people will focus their social energies on befriending people who have lots of friends already.

But the problem is that these social ties are only valuable if there’s reciprocity(互惠) involved. Friendship goes hand in hand with certain responsibilities and expectations. And people with lots of friends may not be able to fulfill those responsibilities—especially those with too many friends.   

In other words, “friendship quality” matters as much, if not more, than only the number of friends you have. Having lots of friends means your precious social resources become dilute (稀释了的), making you less able to be a good friend. And other people take that into account consciously(有意识地)or unconsciously when deciding whether to befriend you. They don’t want to spend their valuable social resources on someone who is unlikely to pay it back.