Optimistic expectations have benefits for effort and emotion with little cost.

Lench, Heather C.; Levine, Linda J.; Dang, Van Mô; Kaiser, Kaitlyn A; Carpenter, Zari Koelbel; Carlson, Steven; Flynn, Elinor; Perez, Kenneth A.; Winckler, Britanny

doi:10.1037/emo0000957

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…For example, research has found that individuals who are unrealistically optimistic about how positively they will feel in the future are better able to handle stress (Colombo et al, 2020). Others have shown that college students with more optimistic expectations for their academic performance invest more quality effort into studying and are more satisfied with their decision-making (Lench et al, 2021). In sum, amid uncertainty, unrealistic optimism may yield benefits in the form of promoting resilience and motivating adaptive behaviors (McKay, 2009).…”

Section: Evolution and Unrealistic Optimismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unrealistic Optimism and Risk for COVID-19 Disease

et al. 2021

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Risk perception and consequently engagement in behaviors to avoid illness often do not match actual risk of infection, morbidity, and mortality. Unrealistic optimism occurs when individuals falsely believe that their personal outcomes will be more favorable than others' in the same risk category. Natural selection could favor overconfidence if its benefits, such as psychological resilience, outweigh its costs. However, just because optimism biases may have offered fitness advantages in our evolutionary past does not mean that they are always optimal. The current project examined relationships among personal risk for severe COVID-19, risk perceptions, and preventative behaviors. We predicted that those with higher risk of severe COVID-19 would exhibit unrealistic optimism and behave in ways inconsistent with their elevated risk of morbidity and mortality. Clinical risk scores for severe COVID-19 were calculated and compared with COVID-19 threat appraisal, compliance with shelter-in-place orders (March 13–May 22, 2020) and travel restrictions, compliance with public health recommendations, and potential covariates like self-rated knowledge about COVID-19 in a robust dataset including 492 participants from McLennan County, TX, USA. While those with high clinical risk acknowledged their greater likelihood of experiencing severe illness if infected, they actually reported lower perceived likelihood of becoming infected in the first place. While it is possible that those with higher clinical risk scores truly are less likely to become infected, the pattern and significance of these results held after controlling for possible occupational exposure, household size, and other factors related to infection probability. Higher clinical risk also predicted more recent travel within Texas and lower distress during the pandemic (i.e., feeling less stressed, depressed, and helpless). Additional behavioral data suggested that those with higher clinical risk scores did not generally behave differently than those with lower scores during the shelter-in-place order. While unrealistic optimism may provide some short-term psychological benefits, it could be dangerous due to improper assessment of hazardous situations; inferring that optimism bias has evolutionary origins does not mean that unrealistic optimism is “optimal” in every situation. This may be especially true when individuals face novel sources (or scales) of risk, such as a global pandemic.

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Section: Evolution and Unrealistic Optimismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unrealistic Optimism and Risk for COVID-19 Disease

et al. 2021

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“…A person who forecasts they will feel disappointed if they perform poorly on an exam might be motivated to study harder and thus perform better on that exam. In turn, they would likely cope well with their exam outcome because of forecasting's motivational benefits, rather than due to forecasting (in)accuracy per se (e.g., Lench et al, 2021;Morewedge & Buechel, 2013). Second, perhaps forecasted affect influences strategies implemented early in the emotion generation process, such as situation selection or modification (Gross, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affective Forecasting in Everyday Life: Accuracy and Associations with Emotional Benefits

Moeck¹,

Grewal²,

Greenaway³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Affective forecasting—how people think they will feel in the future—is theorized to benefit well-being, but there is scarce evidence for this link. Therefore, we aimed to determine whether (1) people can accurately forecast their affect for the next day and week, and (2) whether accurate forecasts benefit well-being. Participants (N = 209) completed 7 days of experience sampling. Each evening, participants forecasted how they would feel tomorrow. The following day, participants rated experienced affect, as well as emotion-focused coping and daily life satisfaction. Participants showed relative accuracy—when they forecasted experiencing higher affect levels than usual, they experienced higher affect—with evidence of slight overestimation depending on how accuracy was operationalized. However, forecasting accuracy did not predict coping or life satisfaction. These findings were consistent across affect valence and using multilevel regression and response surface analyses, calling into question theorized links between affective forecasting and well-being.

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“…Since forecasted improvement appears to be a hallmark of high-quality relationships, there might be immediate or delayed benefits to having positive expectations. Optimism about the future can have a range of psychological benefits (e.g., Taylor & Brown, 1988; Lench et al, 2021). Thus, the link between relationship quality and greater forecasting bias might be one instance of beneficial optimism.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting current feelings into the past and future: Better current relationship quality reduces negative retrospective bias and increases positive forecasting bias

Peetz

Shimizu

Royle

2022

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

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We examine bias in how people perceive their romantic relationship over time. Participants appraised their relationship 6 months and 1 year ago on average more negatively than they had done at the time (retrospective bias) but showed no significant mean-level forecasting bias. Higher relationship quality at the time of appraisal was linked to less negative retrospective bias but to more positive forecasting bias (Study 1). Similarly, participants who were experimentally manipulated to focus on the high relationship quality aspects in their relationship (vs. considering challenging aspects of their relationship) showed more forecasting bias and less retrospective bias (Study 2). This pattern occurred due to participants’ projecting positive current feelings onto predicted relationship quality in the future and remembered relationship quality in the past. This projection reduced the overall negative bias in recalled relationship quality for those currently perceiving higher relationship quality but increased positive bias in forecasted relationship quality.

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Optimistic expectations have benefits for effort and emotion with little cost.

Cited by 14 publications

References 55 publications

Unrealistic Optimism and Risk for COVID-19 Disease

Unrealistic Optimism and Risk for COVID-19 Disease

Affective Forecasting in Everyday Life: Accuracy and Associations with Emotional Benefits

Projecting current feelings into the past and future: Better current relationship quality reduces negative retrospective bias and increases positive forecasting bias

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