Robust evidence documents such unrealistic optimism in many domains of life. This article was published in print as “Unflagging Optimism.People generally believe that their own future will be better than the one of comparable others. “If you are aware of the optimism bias, you can commit to actions or rules that will help protect you,” Sharot notes. Realizing the brain’s partiality may be half the battle. ![]() Yet being overly optimistic has consequences, too, Sharot says, preventing us from taking some precautions to avoid harm or misfortune. Its absence can signal anxiety or depression. This finding jibes with past studies that observed an optimism bias in about 80 percent of the population. That inconsistent neural response was observed most clearly or most often in individuals who scored higher on standard tests for optimism as a personality trait. There, however, activity did not correspond as closely with the magnitude of error in the participants’ initial risk estimates, matching the poorer correction later. The greater the difference between the subjects’ initial guess of their risk and the true probability, the more activity appeared in these regions, hinting that they contribute to positive error correction.Īctivity in another part of the brain, the right inferior frontal gyrus, changed in response to discouraging information. Using functional MRI, the researchers found areas in the prefrontal cortex, where conscious reasoning takes place, that were active when participants received information that was better than anticipated. In contrast, when they had underestimated their odds of meeting with a particular misfortune, they made less drastic revisions to their guess or none at all-clinging to their earlier belief that they would probably avoid the bad luck. After getting the good news, these subjects rated their risk for these events as significantly lower than they did earlier. The participants revised most of their estimates the second time around, but 79 percent of those tested paid much more attention when their actual risk was lower than what they had initially guessed. Participants were then told the actual average probability of each before repeating the exercise. ![]() Tali Sharot, a University College London neurology researcher, and her colleagues asked 19 individuals between the ages of 19 and 27 to estimate their odds of experiencing 80 unfavorable events, such as contracting various diseases or being the victim of a crime. Now a study in Nature Neuroscience last October has found clues to the brain’s predilection for the positive, identifying regions that may fuel this “optimism bias” by preferentially responding to rosier information. Most of us hold unrealistically optimistic views of the future, research shows, downplaying the likelihood that we will have bad experiences. These findings indicate that optimism is tied to a selective update failure and diminished neural coding of undesirable information regarding the future. However, highly optimistic individuals exhibited reduced tracking of estimation errors that called for negative update in right inferior prefrontal gyrus. Distinct regions of the prefrontal cortex tracked estimation errors when those called for positive update, both in individuals who scored high and low on trait optimism. This selectivity was mediated by a relative failure to code for errors that should reduce optimism. Participants updated their beliefs more in response to information that was better than expected than to information that was worse. We examined this question and found a marked asymmetry in belief updating. ![]() How people maintain unrealistic optimism, despite frequently encountering information that challenges those biased beliefs, is unknown. Unrealistic optimism is a pervasive human trait that influences domains ranging from personal relationships to politics and finance. Tali Sharot, Christoph W Korn & Raymond J Dolan
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