Harris, AJL; de Moliere, L; Soh, M; Hahn, U; (2017) Unrealistic comparative optimism: An unsuccessful search for evidence of a genuinely motivational bias. PLoS ONE , 12 (3) , Article e0173136. 10.1371/journal.pone.0173136.

Preview	Text (Published article) Harris_Unrealistic_comparative_optimism.pdf - Published Version Download (2MB) | Preview
Preview	Text (Supplementary tables) Harris_Unrealistic_comparative_optimism_Suppl.pdf - Accepted Version Download (49kB) | 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.

Download activity - last month

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as CSVJSONXML

Archive Staff Only

View Item