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

Abstract

One of the most accepted findings across psychology is that people are unrealistically optimistic in their judgments of comparative risk concerning future life events—they judge negative events as less likely to happen to themselves than to the average person. Harris and Hahn (2011), however, demonstrated how unbiased (non-optimistic) responses can result in data patterns commonly interpreted as indicative of optimism due to statistical artifacts. In the current paper, we report the results of 5 studies that control for these statistical confounds and observe no evidence for residual unrealistic optimism, even observing a ‘severity effect’ whereby severe outcomes were overestimated relative to neutral ones (Studies 3 & 4). We conclude that there is no evidence supporting an optimism interpretation of previous results using the prevalent comparison method.

Warmth and competence predict overoptimistic beliefs for out-group but not in-group members

“…Optimistic beliefs can only be formed in relation to potential future events. To address concerns over methodological and statistical confounds [ 12 , 66 ], our aim was to choose a sample of events that were balanced on valence, frequency and controllability in the general population. To our knowledge, only one other study performed by Chambers, Windschitl & Suls attempted to balance these characteristics [ 20 ].…”

“…One likely reason for this inconsistency is that desirable and undesirable events have not been closely matched on other characteristics, e.g. perceived event frequency, controllability or emotional intensity [ 65 , 66 ]. In addition to this biased sampling of events , several other methodological concerns have been voiced, such as scale attenuation and minority underrepresentation [ 12 , 20 , 67 , 68 ].…”

“…In summary, several event characteristics can exert a considerable influence on the magnitude of optimistic beliefs. However, because of consistent methodological confounds, including the biased sampling of events characteristics, the true prevalence of the optimistic bias has been questioned [ 12 , 66 ]. The present study will address these concerns by balancing target events of key characteristics and investigate the extent to which overoptimistic beliefs still manifest.…”

“…The present study had two aims. First, we wanted to address some of the methodological concerns surrounding research on comparative optimism [ 12 , 66 ]. To overcome biased sampling of events, our study balanced four event characteristics across desirable and undesirable events, namely perceived event frequency, event controllability, emotional intensity of the events and the personal experience with the events.…”

“…If left unbalanced, either of these characteristics might confound results and bias their interpretation. Furthermore, by using a percentage response scale from 0% to 100%, we allowed our participants to choose more nuanced responses that would otherwise not be possible with a typical attenuated Likert scale [ 66 ]. Second, we wanted to better specify the reference target in terms of warmth and competence, and to investigate how these dimensions would influence the reference target’s perceived likelihood estimates for desirable and undesirable events.…”