Of course, there are situations where optimism can do more harm than good. Take, for example, what researchers have coined as unrealistic optimism. Unrealistic optimism is the belief that one is more likely to experience positive outcomes compared to others who are objectively similar to them (Weinstein, 1980). In an often‐cited example of unrealistic optimism, smokers believe that they are at less risk for developing lung cancer compared to the general population of smokers (Weinstein et al., 2005).
This mindset comes with some clearly negative implications for health behaviors. For smokers, it leads to a discounting of a very real health risk and might interfere with efforts to quit smoking. While some research has suggested that optimists may be more attentive to information about potential risks (Aspinwall & Brunhart, 1996), those who are high in unrealistic optimism may avoid this same information (Wiebe & Black, 1997), which may ultimately stop them from fully understanding their risk or acting preventatively.
Importantly and, perhaps, counterintuitively, unrealistic optimism is often assessed independently of accuracy (Weinstein & Klein, 1996). Thus, it is difficult to determine if one is truly unrealistic when they say that they have a lower risk of developing any given health condition than the average person; maybe people who make these kinds of claims do indeed have more positive outcomes and are different from others in a similar boat. However, in studies that evaluate the chances of a specific outcome (e.g., evaluate the risk of heart attack using blood pressure and cholesterol data), researchers have operationalized when optimism is considered “unrealistic” (e.g., those who misjudged their risk by greater than 10%; Radcliffe & Klein, 2002). This research has found that, while dispositional optimists have a lower risk of negative outcomes, unrealistic optimists have a higher risk of negative outcomes.
Unrealistic optimists are less worried about their risk levels for negative events (Weinstein, 1982), have less prior knowledge about risks, and remember less when provided with information about risk (Radcliffe & Klein, 2002). Some researchers have suggested that this may be because of the invulnerability sometimes felt by unrealistic optimists (Perloff & Fetzer, 1986; Schwarzer, 1994); they may feel that risk information is irrelevant to them. Weinstein and Lachendro (1982) suggest that egocentrism plays a role in our use of unrealistic optimism—we tend to think that we will be far better off than others when we are not forced to think carefully about others' circumstances. Neuroscience research on the topic has suggested that those high in unrealistic optimism fail to code for errors that should reduce optimism, making it difficult for them to accurately update their beliefs (Sharot et al., 2011). Altogether, an unrealistic sense of optimism leads people to be at higher risk for negative outcomes, seek out less information about risk, and take fewer preventative steps to mitigate risk. Of course, unrealistic optimism is not a dichotomy, and those who are very high in unrealistic optimism may be most at risk for these aversive outcomes.
In the past decade, many researchers have found that optimism, even when not unrealistic, can occasionally be associated with negative outcomes. In another often‐cited example, being optimistic about exam scores does not make students feel any less distressed or nervous before they get feedback, and being optimistic does not protect students from feeling bad when they learn they did poorly (Sweeny & Shepperd, 2010). In fact, optimism leads to greater disappointment when students receive a bad grade. Interestingly, students know that getting their hopes up, only to receive a bad grade, will be disappointing—and, yet, they continue to be optimistic (Sweeny & Shepperd, 2010). This suggests that, despite knowing the costs of optimism and experiencing no positive change in affect because of it, students continue to be optimistic. Worth noting, true pessimists—those who believe that they performed worse on the exam than they really did—report lower negative affect after the feedback (Sweeny & Shepperd, 2010).
Further, people tend to naturally drop their efforts to be optimistic when they expect things to go badly, especially when being evaluated. This suggests that people likely know that optimism is not the most beneficial mindset to adopt at all times. This tendency to shift towards pessimism in the moments before feedback is referred to as “sobering up” (Sweeny & Krizan, 2013). In general, the closer we get to an evaluation of our performance, the more pessimistic we become. There are many reasons why this may occur. For example, the closer we get to an event, the less control we have over the outcome, and the more “real” (i.e., concrete) it becomes (Sweeny & Krizan, 2013). There is an increased pressure to be accurate in our prediction of how we will fare after an event, and we are more likely to think critically about our expectations in order to counteract any unrealistic optimism (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999; Tetlock & Kim, 1987). As in the case of the student receiving their exam score, a shift toward pessimism may also be an outcome of affect management, in which we temper our expectations in order to avoid negative feelings (Sweeny & Krizan, 2013). Being pessimistic in these moments can spare us from painful emotions, like disappointment, and allow us to prepare for unfavorable outcomes (Sweeny et al., 2006). The protective functions of bracing for bad news may explain why, in some cases, pessimism might be called for—and that optimism might be a bad thing.
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