In the absence of optimism, the pursuit seems hopeless. If you do not expect to succeed in attaining your goals, you will not try. What are the potential benefits to being optimistic? One is that optimistic expectations are motivating. Their argument was that consistently inaccurate beliefs should persist only if they bring some overall benefit that outweighs the cost. In an influential 2009 paper, the psychologist Ryan McKay and the philosopher Daniel Dennett applied the evolutionary frame of error management theory (which had been developed earlier by the evolutionary psychologists David Buss and Martie Haselton) to predict some of the possible benefits. The consistency of these optimistically wrong expectations suggests that they are a feature of the human mind that has provided some evolutionary advantage. Rather, the point is that the average tendency across all people and situations is to believe that good things are likely to occur. This is not to say that everybody is optimistic all the time about everything (an exception to this general tendency is people diagnosed with depression who tend to have more negative and realistic expectations). Most people remain optimistic even when it is made clear to them that there is no rational basis for their optimism and even in the face of negative feedback or previous failures. Optimism about upcoming events is also surprisingly resilient. Your desires for good things to happen lead you to believe that what you want is likely to occur. Most people’s unrealistic optimism applies to everything from acing a test to avoiding unemployment or a favourite sports team winning the game. On average, people expect good things to happen and bad things to not happen, and these optimistic beliefs are more positive than can be justified by reality. What’s more interesting is that they are consistently wrong in being too optimistic. People feel good when the future looks like it will align with their desires and feel bad when the future looks bleak or when hopes are suddenly crushed by failure.Įven though expectations about what is likely in the future are critical to choices, they are often wrong. Your expectations also impact your emotions. Your expectations about the future affect whether or not you pursue a goal, how much effort you put in, and when you give up. It is also true for more consequential decisions, such as choosing a career path based on the likelihood of success and satisfaction. This is true for small decisions, such as whether or not to bring an umbrella based on the likelihood of rain. What you expect to happen in the future drives your decisions. Our specific project grew out of decades of research showing that expectations matter for people and that, on the whole, people are often overly optimistic. Together with work by others, our findings suggest ways you can benefit from being optimistic about your goals, while minimising the costs. If people always expect to reach their goals and for the future to be bright, doesn’t that risk complacency as they sit back and wait for the good things to happen? And what if they fail to reach their goals? Won’t they feel intensely disappointed because they had such positive expectations? My colleagues and I sought to address these questions in our recent research. Promoting positivity and optimism sounds laudable, but you might have wondered if it’s overly simplistic – after all, what about the possible costs? This focus has partly arisen from decades of research showing that positive thinking benefits our physical and mental health. These days, we hear a lot about the supposed benefits of positive thinking, with an ever-increasing number of apps and social media platforms claiming to help promote our happiness and optimism. 0:01 Brought to you by Curio, a Psyche partner Optimistic people tend to enjoy more success, but that’s only when they put the effort in – wishful thinking is not enough
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