Yechiam, E. and Harris, A.J.L. and de Molière, L. and Soh, Melinda and Hahn, Ulrike (2017) Unrealistic comparative optimism: an unsuccessful search for evidence of a genuinely motivational bias. PLoS One 12 (3), e0173136. ISSN 1932-6203.
|
Text
18926.pdf - Published Version of Record Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
One of the most accepted findings across psychology is that people are unrealistically optimistic in their judgments of comparative risk concerning future life events—they judge negative events as less likely to happen to themselves than to the average person. Harris and Hahn (2011), however, demonstrated how unbiased (non-optimistic) responses can result in data patterns commonly interpreted as indicative of optimism due to statistical artifacts. In the current paper, we report the results of 5 studies that control for these statistical confounds and observe no evidence for residual unrealistic optimism, even observing a ‘severity effect’ whereby severe outcomes were overestimated relative to neutral ones (Studies 3 & 4). We conclude that there is no evidence supporting an optimism interpretation of previous results using the prevalent comparison method.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Jun 2017 10:50 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:33 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/18926 |
Statistics
Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.
Archive Staff Only (login required)
