![]() In Sections 3 and 4, we consider their epistemic status. Are they tendencies to adopt and maintain positive beliefs and to make predictions that are optimistically biased, or to express desires and hopes about the self and the future? We suggest that we should understand optimistically biased cognitive states as beliefs and predictions. In Section 2, we ask how we should think about positive illusions. In Section 1, we distinguish between unrealistic optimism and other positive illusions and explain different ways of oper-ationalizing unrealistic optimism. Whether they do indeed have positive effects is beyond the scope of this paper. If such cognitive states can be said to be false or epistemically irrational beliefs, then they are candidates for being false or epistemically irrational beliefs that are useful. In order to assess such claims, we need to explain what unrealistic optimism is, whether the cognitive states that are unrealistically optimistic are belief states, and to what extent they are false. It is sometimes claimed that positive illusions generally, and unrealistic optimism specifically, are systematic tendencies to form beliefs that are biased, and often false, but have significant benefits (Taylor & Brown, 1988, 1994), because they increase wellbeing, contribute to mental and physical health, and support productivity and motivation (cf. Beliefs exhibit epistemic irrationality to the extent that they are badly supported by the evidence available to the agent, or are maintained despite counter-evidence which is available to the agent. There is an ongoing debate in philosophy and psychology as to whether false beliefs are epistemically irrational and whether they can have pragmatic benefits, even if they are epistemically irrational (Bortolotti & Sullivan-Bissett, 2015 Craigie & Bortolotti, 2014 Haselton & Nettle, 2006). In this paper we are interested in the nature of unrealistic optimism and other positive illusions as discussed in the psychological literature. Based on the classic and recent empirical literature on unrealistic optimism, we offer some preliminary answers to these questions, thereby laying the foundations for answering further questions about unrealistic optimism, such as whether it has biological, psychological, or epistemic benefits. For exam-ple, in many studies, the prime measure of unrealistic. To the contrary, most researchers seem to assume that underestimates of risk for a wide variety of problems covary. We also ask to what extent unrealistically optimistic cognitive states are fixed. istic optimism in a variety of samples however, no study has explicitly considered the possibility that unrealistic optimism is a multidimen-sional construct. We are interested in whether cognitive states that are unrealistically optimistic are belief states, whether they are false, and whether they are epistemically irrational. doi:10.1037//0278-6133.14.2.Here we consider the nature of unrealistic optimism and other related positive illusions. Resistance of personal risk perceptions to debiasing interventions. Unrealistic optimism: east and west? Front Psychology. Shepperd JA, Klein WMP, Waters EA, Weinstein ND. Pantheon/Random House 2011.Ĭarver CS, Scheier MF, Segerstrom SC. The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain. ![]() Optimism bias within the project management context: a systematic quantitative literature review. Unrealistic optimism about future life events.
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