Th is paper explores the relations of concern, pessimism and neuroticism in two groups of young people, students in their fi nal year of high school, and senior undergraduates of diff erent faculties. In this research, we further want to check at what level these cognitive elements are expressed in young as well as whether there is a diff erence between the sexes. Th e study included 274 participants, average age of 20 from the South-Western Serbia. Th e following instruments were used: Scale of optimism / pessimism, Penn state questionnaire of concerns and GEN questionnaire for generalized neuroticism. Th e results showed that young people have a higher concern, pessimism, and that 17.9% of young people in our sample were neurotic. Female gender is more concerned and neurotic when compared to males.

This study investigates the relationship between perfectionistic cognitions and optimism-pessimism, including the results of a study involving 88 college students. The Slovak version of the optimism-pessimism questionnaire ISS (SarmánySchuller, 1992) and the Perfectionistic Cognitions Inventory (Flett, Hewitt, Blankstein, Gray, 1998) were used in our research, which showed a statistically significant negative correlation of r = –0.27 between optimism and the measure of perfectionistic cognitions and a statistically significant positive correlation of r = 0.41 between pessimism and perfectionistic cognitions. These results confirm negative expectations associated with perfectionistic cognitions.