Understanding the coherence of the severity effect and optimism phenomena: Lessons from attention

Abstract

Claims that optimism is a near-universal characteristic of human judgment seem to be at odds with recent results from the judgment and decision making literature suggesting that the likelihood of negative outcomes are overestimated relative to neutral outcomes. In an attempt to reconcile these seemingly contrasting phenomena, inspiration is drawn from the attention literature in which there is evidence that both positive and negative stimuli can have attentional privilege relative to neutral stimuli. This result provides a framework within which I consider three example phenomena that purport to demonstrate that people's likelihood estimates are optimistic: Wishful thinking; Unrealistic comparative optimism and Asymmetric belief updating. The framework clarifies the relationships between these phenomena and stimulates future research questions. Generally, whilst results from the first two phenomena appear reconcilable in this conceptualisation, further research is required in reconciling the third.

Comparative optimism in older adults’ future health expectations

“…Given the challenges in measuring and interpreting comparative optimism (e.g., Harris, ; Harris & Hahn, ), there are important considerations to note. First, comparative estimates may be egocentrically driven, resulting in comparative estimates that simply reflect personal judgements (Chambers et al ., ; Eiser et al ., ; Klar & Giladi, ; Kruger, ).…”

Unrealistic comparative optimism: An unsuccessful search for evidence of a genuinely motivational bias

“…They are quite correct that the scale artifacts posited in [ 28 ] only directly challenge results obtained via the comparative method and thus the phenomenon of unrealistic comparative optimism at the group level (in the terminology of [ 34 ]). Our own review of the literature suggests that the evidence for other types of optimism (e.g., absolute optimism or, relatedly, the wishful thinking effect, whereby the desirability of an outcome causes an inflated probability estimate) is likewise overstated (see also, [ 21 , 28 , 41 , 61 , 63 , 69 , 70 ]). The current paper is not, however, the appropriate outlet for this debate.…”

“…Consequently, Studies 2–5 are closer in spirit to the ‘indirect’ methodology in comparative optimism studies, whereby participants provide separate estimates of their own chance and the average person’s chance, with bias inferred if there is a reliable difference between these estimates (see e.g., [ 29 , 34 ]). Whilst traditional studies using real-world events can be critiqued on similar grounds to the direct method [ 28 , 55 , 63 ], the present studies maintain tight control in providing participants with identical information across the two conditions. If traditional unrealistic optimism data reflect a genuine biasing effect of motivation on likelihood estimates, a difference in estimates should be observed between conditions in studies such as these.…”

People express more bias in their predictions than in their likelihood judgments.

“…More generally, the present findings have important implications for the debates about whether, how, and how strongly motivations bias expectations (Bar-Hillel et al, 2008a; Bilgin, 2012; Biner et al, 2009; de Molière & Harris, 2016; Harris, 2017; Harris et al, 2009; Harris & Corner, 2011; Lench, 2009; Logg et al, 2018; Massey et al, 2011; Simmons & Massey, 2012; Slovic, 1966). Terms like expectations and forecasts are broad ones.…”