Harris, A.J.L. and Shah, P. and Catmur, C. and Bird, Geoffrey and Hahn, Ulrike (2013) Autism, optimism and positive events: evidence against a general optimistic bias. In: Knauff, M. and Pauen, M. and Sebanz, N. and Wachsmuth, I. (eds.) Cooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics: Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin. Texas, USA: Cognitive Science Society, pp. 555-560. ISBN 9780976831891.
Abstract
The conclusion that people are optimistic concerning personal risk does not have a sound evidential basis. Following Harris and Hahn’s (2011) critique of unrealistic optimism research, we consider the evidence from a recent series of high profile neuroscience papers. We demonstrate that the methods used are fundamentally flawed. A simulation and an empirical comparison of autism spectrum condition participants with typical adults confirm that we have learnt nothing about optimism from these studies.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | optimism, human rationality, belief updating, statistical artifact |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Birkbeck Knowledge Lab |
| Depositing User: | Sarah Hall |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Jun 2015 11:06 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:16 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/12307 |
Statistics
Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.
Archive Staff Only (login required)
