Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa.
Department of Psychology, Appalachian State University.
Psychol Sci. 2021 Oct;32(10):1605-1616. doi: 10.1177/09567976211004545. Epub 2021 Sep 2.
Past work has suggested that people prescribe optimism-believing it is better to be optimistic, instead of accurate or pessimistic, about uncertain future events. Here, we identified and addressed an important ambiguity about whether those findings reflect an endorsement of biased beliefs-that is, whether people prescribe likelihood estimates that reflect overoptimism. In three studies, participants ( = 663 U.S. university students) read scenarios about protagonists facing uncertain events with a desired outcome. Results replicated prescriptions of optimism when we used the same solicitations as in past work. However, we found quite different prescriptions when using alternative solicitations that asked about potential bias in likelihood estimations and that did not involve vague terms such as "optimistic." Participants generally prescribed being optimistic, feeling optimistic, and even thinking optimistically about the events, but they did not prescribe overestimating the likelihood of those events.
过去的研究表明，人们倾向于乐观，认为对未来不确定的事件持乐观态度比准确或悲观态度更好。在这里，我们确定并解决了一个关于这些发现是否反映出对有偏差的信念的认可的重要歧义，也就是说，人们是否会开出反映过度乐观的可能性估计。在三项研究中，参与者（= 663 名美国大学生）阅读了关于主角面临有理想结果的不确定事件的情景。结果复制了过去研究中使用相同征集方法时的乐观处方。然而，当我们使用涉及潜在偏差可能性估计的替代征集方法时，结果则大不相同，而且这些方法不涉及“乐观”等模糊术语。参与者通常会对事件持乐观、感到乐观，甚至乐观地思考，但他们不会过高估计这些事件的可能性。
