Jacksonville University.
University of California, Davis.
Child Dev. 2020 Jul;91(4):1116-1134. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13293. Epub 2019 Aug 16.
Two studies investigated 5- to 10-year-olds' (N = 194) positivity bias when forecasting the future. Children from two geographic locations (mostly Caucasian, higher income college town; mostly African American, lower income urban community) completed a future expectations task (FET). For multiple scenarios, children predicted whether a positive versus negative (optimism items) or a positive versus extraordinary positive (wishful thinking items) outcome would occur, including its likelihood. In both samples, optimism and wishful thinking decreased with age, optimism was higher than wishful thinking, children did not show a comparative self-optimism bias, and individual differences in the FET optimism score correlated with self-reported dispositional optimism and hope. Exploratory comparisons revealed between-sample equivalence in responses to all measures, except for less tempered wishful thinking in the urban community.
两项研究调查了 5 至 10 岁儿童（N=194）对未来的积极偏向。来自两个地理位置（主要是白种人，高收入的大学城；主要是非洲裔美国人，低收入的城市社区）的儿童完成了未来期望任务（FET）。对于多个场景，儿童预测积极与消极（乐观项目）或积极与非凡积极（一厢情愿的想法项目）的结果是否会发生，包括其可能性。在两个样本中，乐观和一厢情愿的想法都随着年龄的增长而减少，乐观程度高于一厢情愿的想法，儿童没有表现出自我乐观的偏见，FET 乐观分数的个体差异与自我报告的性格乐观和希望相关。探索性比较表明，除了城市社区的一厢情愿的想法更为温和之外，所有测量指标的样本间都具有等效性。
