Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2010 Feb;139(1):32-48. doi: 10.1037/a0018144.
People appear to be unrealistically optimistic about their future prospects, as reflected by theory and research in the fields of psychology, organizational behavior, behavioral economics, and behavioral finance. Many real-world examples (e.g., consumer behavior during economic recessions), however, suggest that people are not always overly optimistic. I suggest that people can be both overly optimistic and pessimistic in their beliefs about future events, depending on whether they focus on success or on failure. More specifically, people judge the likelihood of desirable and undesirable events to be higher than similar neutral events because they misattribute the arousal those events evoke to their greater perceived likelihood. I demonstrated this stake-likelihood effect in 4 studies. In Study 1, arousal was shown to increase likelihood judgments. Study 2 demonstrated that such elevated likelihood judgments are due to misattribution of the arousal from having a stake in the outcome. Study 3 demonstrated that such misattribution of arousal occurs for desirable and undesirable events. Study 4 showed the effects of optimism and pessimism on likelihood judgments in a field setting with soccer fans. Together, the findings suggest that wishful thinking might be less prevalent than previously believed. Pessimism might be as likely as optimism in subjective probabilities.
人们对未来前景的看法似乎过于乐观，这反映了心理学、组织行为学、行为经济学和行为金融学等领域的理论和研究。然而，许多现实世界的例子（例如经济衰退期间的消费行为）表明，人们并不总是过于乐观。我认为，人们对未来事件的信念既可以过于乐观，也可以过于悲观，具体取决于他们关注的是成功还是失败。更具体地说，人们判断理想事件和不理想事件的可能性高于类似的中性事件，因为他们将这些事件引起的唤醒错误地归因于他们更高的感知可能性。我在 4 项研究中证明了这种利害关系效应。在研究 1 中，唤醒被证明会增加可能性判断。研究 2 表明，这种升高的可能性判断是由于对结果的利害关系引起的唤醒的错误归因。研究 3 表明，这种对唤醒的错误归因会发生在理想事件和不理想事件中。研究 4 在足球迷的实地环境中，展示了乐观和悲观对可能性判断的影响。总之，研究结果表明，一厢情愿的想法可能不像之前认为的那样普遍。在主观概率方面，悲观主义可能与乐观主义一样普遍。
