![]() ![]() However, this fact does not prove that humans as a species are inherently optimistic across all situations or that such potential optimism bias is a feature of human cognition, they said. The authors of the new study said that it is true that certain people might be optimistic in certain situations: For example, football fans might be particularly optimistic about the chances of their favorite team winning a game. This finding suggests that scientists’ impression of such bias may arise purely from statistical processes that are not grounded in people’s real reactions, the researchers found. ![]() However, the researchers found that the computer simulations produced patterns of data that looked as if these simulations did actually have a bias toward optimism. Because these simulations are artificial and are not actual humans, they are not capable of being intrinsically optimistic, and thus they could not possibly have a bias toward optimism, the researchers said. Some of the events were good things (having a healthy child, finding money in the street), and some were negative (being robbed, getting cancer).īut the researchers also created computerized simulations that were designed to act in a rational, unbiased manner in response to receiving information about the statistical chance of a negative or positive life event. In the new study, the researchers did experiments with 13 participants, asking them to rate the likelihood of 80 possible life events. One such example is the so-called gambler’s fallacy, in which a gambler is positive that he or she will win the next round of blackjack, just after losing multiple rounds in a row, Petrocelli said. “Social psychology is full of examples of” people being overly optimistic, he said. “I don’t agree with their broader conclusion that the unrealistic optimism bias doesn’t exist,” he told Live Science. John Petrocelli, a psychologist at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who was not involved in the study, said he was also skeptical about the researchers’ claims. “It is absolutely false,” she told Live Science, adding that numerous previous studies have suggested the existence of such bias. Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist at University College London who studies optimism bias and who was not involved in the new study, said she disagreed with the conclusion that there is no evidence for optimism bias. However, experts who were not involved in the new study said the findings are unlikely to cause the idea of optimism bias to fall out of favor among psychologists in the field.
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