James Tanner

legacy-wiki

Psych

April 28, 2012

Recovered from the older tannerjc.net wiki snapshot dated January 23, 2016.

Optimism

  • http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2011/WTVM053018.htm
  • A problem that has puzzled scientists for decades is why human optimism is so pervasive, when reality continually confronts us with information that challenges these biased beliefs.
  • shown that our failure to alter optimistic predictions when presented with conflicting information is due to errors in how we process the information in our brains.
  • Many experts believe the financial crisis in 2008 was precipitated by analysts overestimating the performance of their assets even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary
  • All participants showed increased activity in the frontal lobes of the brain when the information given was better than expected; this activity actively processed the information to recalculate an estimate. However, when the information was worse than estimated, the more optimistic a participant was (according to the personality questionnaire), the less efficiently activity in these frontal regions coded for it, suggesting they were disregarding the evidence presented to them.
  • http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/opinion/15Sharot.html
  • http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2011/10/the-optimists-brain.html
  • The optimist’s brain rejects negative (pessimistic) thoughts, meaning these thoughts never enter awareness
  • A pessimistic or otherwise unwelcome input enters The Unconscious (blue circled area) directly—this is always the case
  • three possible outcomes
  • the input is filtered and ejected (discarded)
  • the input is buried (remains) in the unconscious, where it might do all sorts of mischief later
  • the input passes right through as though it had never existed. (neutrino theory)
  • http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-happiness-advantage/201103/are-you-irrational-optimist
  • What we should be saying is you’re an irrational optimist!
  • We are trying to say that person has a warped vision of reality, which is based on desire, not how things actually are.
  • Irrational optimism is why financial bubbles form, why we buy homes we can’t afford, and why we prematurely put up banners that say mission accomplished.
  • The difference between an optimist and a pessimist is how they then deal with the reality they perceive. According to researchers like Martin Seligman, pessimists see problems as permanent and pervasive. Optimists see the problems, but they perceive them as local and temporary.
  • Rational optimists see problems, but unlike pessimists, they think they can do something about them.
  • Pessimism causes paralysis. Irrational optimism causes delusion.
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pessimism
  • Pessimists, however, are often able to provide arguments that suggest that their understanding of reality is justified; as in Depressive realism or (pessimistic realism).
  • Criticisms of this sort however assume that pessimism leads inevitably to a mood of darkness and utter depression. Many philosophers would disagree, claiming that the term pessimism is being abused. The link between pessimism and nihilism is present, but the former does not necessarily lead to the latter, as philosophers such as Albert Camus believed.
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism (nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value)

http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~dkoehler/reprints/scenarios.pdf

  • People’s views of how they will go about completing tasks are very similar to best-case scenarios.
  • Such scenarios are associated with overly optimistic predictions of task completion
  • Experiment 4 demonstrated that regardless of plausibility, predictors did not attend to pessimistic scenarios.
  • This pattern of results suggested that participants were motivated to disregard pessimistic constructions of task completion.
  • we had no difficulty leading people to consider alternatives to their preferred scenarios, but they failed to use the information in these more pessimistic scenarios when forming final completion time estimate
  • Participants in the current experiments may have felt justified in paying short shrift to pessimistic scenarios because they believed they could overcome anticipated obstacles
  • As their delayed completion times suggest, perceptions of control are sometimes more illusory than real
  • These analyses provide some evidence that abandoning optimistic scenarios and replacing them with pessimistic scenarios would have improved prediction accuracy.
  • In none of the experi-ments were optimistic-scenario predictions more accurate than pessimistic-scenario predictions.
  • pessimistic-scenario predictions tended to be more accurate
  • ** Writing pessimistic scenarios did not reduce predictors optimism about when their tasks would be completed **
  • An increase in accuracy could occur in two ways
  • people might temper their optimism and bring their predictions more in line with their likely outcomes
  • pessimistic scenarios could also alert participants to potential obstacles to task completion and thereby enable them to complete their tasks more efficaciously

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