Love Bradley C, Kopeć Łukasz, Guest Olivia
Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2015 Sep 9;10(9):e0137685. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0137685. eCollection 2015.
People are optimistic about their prospects relative to others. However, existing studies can be difficult to interpret because outcomes are not zero-sum. For example, one person avoiding cancer does not necessitate that another person develops cancer. Ideally, optimism bias would be evaluated within a closed formal system to establish with certainty the extent of the bias and the associated environmental factors, such that optimism bias is demonstrated when a population is internally inconsistent. Accordingly, we asked NFL fans to predict how many games teams they liked and disliked would win in the 2015 season. Fans, like ESPN reporters assigned to cover a team, were overly optimistic about their team's prospects. The opposite pattern was found for teams that fans disliked. Optimism may flourish because year-to-year team results are marked by auto-correlation and regression to the group mean (i.e., good teams stay good, but bad teams improve).
人们相对于他人对自己的前景持乐观态度。然而，现有研究可能难以解读，因为结果并非零和博弈。例如，一个人避免患癌症并不必然意味着另一个人会患癌症。理想情况下，乐观偏差应在一个封闭的形式系统内进行评估，以确定偏差的程度和相关环境因素，从而当一个群体内部不一致时证明存在乐观偏差。因此，我们让美国国家橄榄球联盟（NFL）的球迷预测他们喜欢和不喜欢的球队在2015赛季会赢多少场比赛。球迷们，就像被派去报道一支球队的ESPN记者一样，对自己支持球队的前景过于乐观。而对于球迷不喜欢的球队则出现了相反的模式。乐观情绪可能会盛行，因为球队逐年的成绩具有自相关性且会回归到群体均值（即强队保持强势，而弱队会进步）。
