weinstein unrealistic optimism future life events 1980

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(5), 806820. Overall, English participants showed neither optimism nor pessimism for good events. Unrealistic optimism about future life events. In India those of higher socioeconomic status (SES) were optimistic, while those of lower SES were on average pessimistic. The position regarding comparative optimism for good events was more complex. Two hundred and eighty seven middle aged and middle income participants (200 in India, 87 in England) rated 11 positive and 11 negative events in terms of the chances of each event occurring in 'their own life,' and the chances of each event occurring in the lives of 'people like them.' Comparative optimism was shown for bad events, with Indian participants showing higher levels of optimism than English participants. Research spanning three decades has found that human judgment is characterized by unrealistic optimism (or ‘optimism bias’), the tendency to underestimate the likelihood of negative events and overestimate the likelihood of positive events (Weinstein, 1980). The current study extends enquiry to a different non-Western culture. However, construing unrealistic optimism as a form of self-enhancement, some researchers noted that it was far less common in East Asian cultures. At first, the bulk of research was conducted using populations in North America and Northern Europe, the optimistic bias was thought of as universal, and little attention was paid to cultural context. The optimism bias was first encountered in a 1980 study by psychologist Neil Weinstein, although it was then labeled unrealistic optimism. Weinsteins (1980) pioneer study examined a range of positive and negative real life events that could occur sometime in the future to determine the extent of (. Following Weinstein's (1980) pioneering work many studies established that people have an optimistic bias concerning future life events.

Weinstein unrealistic optimism future life events 1980