Abstract
Received academic wisdom holds that human judgment is characterized by unrealistic optimism, the tendency to underestimate the likelihood of negative events and overestimate the likelihood of positive events. With recent questions being raised over the degree to which the majority of this research genuinely demonstrates optimism, attention to possible mechanisms generating such a bias becomes ever more important. New studies have now claimed that unrealistic optimism emerges as a result of biased belief updating with distinctive neural correlates in the brain. On a behavioral level, these studies suggest that, for negative events, desirable information is incorporated into personal risk estimates to a greater degree than undesirable information (resulting in a more optimistic outlook). However, using task analyses, simulations, and experiments we demonstrate that this pattern of results is a statistical artifact. In contrast with previous work, we examined participants’ use of new information with reference to the normative, Bayesian standard. Simulations reveal the fundamental difficulties that would need to be overcome by any robust test of optimistic updating. No such test presently exists, so that the best one can presently do is perform analyses with a number of techniques, all of which have important weaknesses. Applying these analyses to five experiments shows no evidence of optimistic updating. These results clarify the difficulties involved in studying human ‘bias’ and cast additional doubt over the status of optimism as a fundamental characteristic of healthy cognition.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 71-127 |
Number of pages | 57 |
Journal | Cognitive Psychology |
Volume | 90 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Nov 2016 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Tali Sharot and Christoph Korn for providing a list of the negative life events and their associated probabilities. A preliminary report of the first simulation was reported in the proceedings of CogSci 2013. Punit Shah acknowledges the support of the Experimental Psychology Society , the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust [099775/Z/12/Z].
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The Author(s)
Keywords
- Bayesian belief updating
- Belief updating
- Human rationality
- Motivated reasoning
- Optimism bias
- Unrealistic optimism
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Linguistics and Language
- Artificial Intelligence