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If you’ve noticed, it has been only a few years since the overexcitement around positivity and optimism began. I, like most people, have also been indoctrinated with the same ideology even though I never quite understood it. Books like ‘The Secret’ are bestsellers (I was handed my first copy at 13). Motivational speakers who paint a picture of a utopian world, where every goal is achievable, the world is a serene place, and ‘I’ (here, ‘I’ is not singular, remember we are all sold the same story) am gifted, are immensely popular. Every time I tried to oppose it or compare these statements with facts, I was called a staunch pessimist.
The debate between optimism and pessimism is only looked at through the lens of philosophy. While that is one perspective, we must also consider a different one – the psychological one.
What is optimistic bias?
Let me introduce you to something called the optimistic bias. It is the most significant of all cognitive biases and is fiercely present in as much as 80% of the entire population. It makes you overestimate positive events and underestimate negative ones. It also exaggerates our ability to forecast the future and therefore fosters optimistic overconfidence. The consequences can be huge.
To illustrate my point better, let us consider chain-smokers. They continue to smoke against all logic and reason because they think that cancer is something that happens to ‘others’ and think they will never be affected by it. You see, optimism bias causes you to be blind to risks thus increasing risk-taking behaviours.
If you want the easiest proof for the existence of optimism, look at the expectation vs reality memes that are spread all over the internet.
The classic triumph of hope over experience
Your expectations are set so high that your brain looks at things through rose-tinted glasses. When faced with reality though, the disappointment is horrid.
Disastrous Results and Emotional Suffering
The consequences can be as big as the financial crisis of 2008 that led to the Great Recession. Cognitive neuroscientist and optimism expert Tali Sharot posits that the optimism bias was “one of the core causes of the financial downfall in 2008. Financial analysts and investors had unrealistic expectations of financial growth and success. Banks continued to engage in high-risk decision-making and contributed to the growing economic bubble and its ultimate crash.
While optimism is considered good for mental and physical health because it makes you cheerful, happy, and resilient to obstacles, these facts do not take into account the pain caused by disappointment when these hopes come crashing down (which is bound to happen sometimes). For optimists, disappointment may eventually dominate the anticipatory feelings of expecting the best, so happiness starts to fall.
“... we’ve all been raised by television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t and we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very very pissed off.” -Tyler Durden (Fight Club)
Actually, it might even be better to be a pessimist than an optimist. This view receives implicit support from Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and his late colleague, Amos Tversky. According to their concept of loss aversion, we feel twice as much pain from losses than we experience joy from equal gains.
In some cases, the consequence may even be so big, that whatever little happiness optimists may acquire would stand meaningless— like in the case of climate change. Yes, optimistic bias actually causes people to misread messages regarding climate change. Again, they feel like it may harm ‘others’ but not them. This can be because of two reasons. People either undergo spatial or temporal biases that make them feel disconnected from the problem.
For instance, they might feel climate change will affect the future generations and children and not them (temporal bias). They may also see the pictures of polar bears and melting glaciers and conclude that the problem affects a different geographical location than theirs (spatial bias).
A study can corroborate the fact that optimists and non-optimists interpret climate messages differently. It seems, therefore, that optimists spend less time fixating on arguments for climate change than non-optimists, they frame the recall of the overall articles differently to non-optimists, and they feel less personally threatened by climate change.
There is sufficient evidence that optimism bias is causing a delay in action against climate change. Now, what’s the use of delusional happiness if we all are going to end up dead?
Maybe, it is time to re-evaluate our society that pushes for blind optimism and validates only positive news ignoring the rest. It’s time we engage with some constructive realism.
Written by - Anika Sharma
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