Is The Glass Half Empty Or Half Full: Popularized when and how?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve long been fascinated by the rhetorical question “Is The Glass Half Empty Or Half Full?”. However, I’ve never been able to find out what its original context is, if there was a specific person who coined it, or how it became a mainstay of popular psychology. Could someone enlighten me?

2

Honestly, no clue

I’m going to guess cheesy self help book though.

3

The glass is too big.

4

From an engineering POV, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

5

Far Side view: Four personality types:

  • The glass is half full.
  • The glass is half empty.
  • Half full, no half empty, no wait, half full; WAIT! What was the question again?
  • Hey! I ordered a cheeseburger!
6

And I forget the tv show, but two characters are drinking beer and one holds up a glass and asks “Half-full or half-empty?” The other character grabs the glass, drinks the beer, and says “Why argue?”

7

This site links to a Randomhouse publication which I cannot get to load. It says “The earliest citation is 1985, Ronald Reagan in The New York Times. “You can say it’s like the glass half full or half empty…” From “Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings” by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996). Page 116.”

8

I have the book. There’s nothing more to be gained from it. The quote is there. I’ll have a look around and try to find something further.

9

Update. It goes back to at least the 1930s. A discussion on my linguist list.

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0412D&L=ADS-L&D=0&P=18819

10

I can assure you it goes back further. In the 70s, or maybe even the late 60s, there was a TV ad for a human services organization (CARE? Peace Corps?) that showed a glass with water at the halfway mark, with a slo-mo of water dripping into it. The voiceover said, “If you see this glass as half full, you’re the kind of person we’re looking for.” Something like that. And they were using that device because it was already a very well-known phrase at that point, they weren’t creating it.

Although I see samclem has confirmed an earlier origin.

11

Here we go. Peace Corps poster from 1968.

And the TV ad (I love the Internet)

12

So now someone needs to read everything written by Sir Josiah Stamp to find out when he wrote it.

13

It is not always a glass. Mentioned in The Rotarian of February 1939:

*Rotarian William Lyon (“Billy”) Phelps who chats about books in each issue of this magazine, knows the strange pair too. The pessimist, he explains, looks at a bottle of whatever you please and wails, “O, woe, it’s half gone.” The optimist, eying the same container, exults, “Great, it’s still half full.” *

14

I’m guessing the “bottle” construction is the original. The February 1933 reference is the earliest I see that reflects the optimist/pessimist connotation.

The rather wordy explanation is suggestive of an early use.