Optimism Bias

In the words of Winston Churchill, "The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." When we are optimistic that we can get a job done, or that we can find a cure for a disease, we are more motivated, and we work harder. A scientist who is pessimistic that they will never find a cure for a specific disease will have a mental mind block against finding a cure for a disease, making it considerably harder for them to find a cure. However, a scientist who is optimistic about finding a cure for a disease will be motivated and more focused on their dedication to discovering a cure for a disease such as cancer. When you are optimistic, you are more motivated, and when you are motivated, you are more productive, consequently making optimism a particularly important priority in everyday

The belief-bias effect is when people make judgments based on prior beliefs and general knowledge, rather than on the rules of logic. For example, when a student takes a history test and answers short-answer questions based on their prior beliefs and general knowledge about the time period, rather than thinking about the course material’s relation to the test. To maximize people’s abilities to effectively reason or make decisions, students should be taught about the belief-bias effect, so that they make fewer errors when trying to answer questions.

An article written by Kendra Cherry states, “By nurturing positive emotions, even in the face of terrible events, people can reap both short-term and long-term rewards, including managing stress levels, lessening depression, and building coping skills that will serve them well in the future” (Cherry). Optimism has allowed for people to deal with conflicts in a healthy way. Neuroscientist Tali Sharot in her book The Science of Optimism: Why We’re Hard-Wired for Hope argues that optimism provides an adaptive advantage. According to her, “Expecting our future to be good reduces stress and anxiety, which is good for our health. Researchers studying heart attack patients have found that optimists were more likely than nonoptimistic patients to take vitamins, eat low-fat diets, and exercise, thereby reducing their overall coronary risk” (Popova). Dealing with conflicts positively is better for your health and it decreases bad health

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of optimism is “A disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome.” Looking on the more favorable side can help in the most difficult times. Having a positive attitude is the best response to conflict, especially in time of war. Optimists such as Winston Churchill and Anne Frank kept hope for a better future throughout World War II.

In this Ted Talk cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot shared with us the concept of optimism bias and the research that she has been doing on the very topic. She spoke about it as being an illusion. Her description of optimism bias is that we tend to think we will have more positive things happen in our life than bad one. We overestimate the good and underestimate the bad. Optimism bias is something that people throughout the world experience from young to old people. She gave marriage as an example of this kind of bias and stated that forty percent of people that get married will get a divorce but people who just got married will say that there it is unlikely they will end up divorcing. Despite the facts people

In the article “The Optimism of Uncertainty”, the author, Howard Zinn, has shown his idea that overwhelming powers are not invincible as they look like. He reinforced his opinion by showing that throughout our history those unbeatable forces still have been beaten one-by-one by human beings. A key to victory was that people did not give up, remained their optimistic attitude toward to the future. The article was first come from his book “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress”. However, his idea “hope”, which is an indispensable element of optimism, still answers the question “If our world is facing an imminent environmental catastrophe, how do I live my life right now?” Howard believed “small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” Therefore, in

One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist, is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose. There are a lot of things I don't worry about, because I have a plan in place if they do.” I was really surprised when Randy mentions in order to be a great optimist, you need to think negatively. I completely relate to this because I am the same way, I find myself having optimistic ideas about going place or doing things but end up thinking about what could happen if anything went wrong. Although, I never thought of using those negative thoughts to create a plan in case something does go wrong, it would usually just stop me from doing what I want.

Bias is something every person has; It is the inclination to feel prejudice towards a certain person, subject, or thing. On a personal level, bias affects just about everything a person could encounter, or has yet to encounter in their lifetime. There are two main types of biases people can have; Cognitive bias involves topics such as social attribution or memory errors, that are quite common and have a wide range of effects on how humans perceive things. The other type of bias is called social biases, or sometimes referred to as attributional bias. Attributional biases affect our everyday social interactions, and has a strong impact on people when trying to assess their own and others behaviors.

Confirmation bias is a tendency of people to prefer information that reinforces a thought or believe that they have. People demonstrate this bias when they retain information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotional issues and for deeply rooted beliefs. (Science Daily)

The confirmation bias is the tendency to search for information that confirms our ideas and beliefs. This arises from our eargences to get a good solution. Often times most peopel seek evidence that supports thier ideas more readily than they search for facts that might refute them. Karen for example is using examples from the past regarding the election and who has won to demonstarte that her brother will win. "Karen your can't be serious. What about the issues, such as school poilces and procedures?" "Those issues don't matter. Regina Hoyt won becauseh she was populr last year. The only real issue is popularoty." This is an example of how Karen is searching for information that confirms her ideas that he brother will win the election because

Confirmation bias is an impediment is a constant battle in life. When finding a solution to a problem, I search for the easiest yet logical solution. This does not always work due to the fact I am not always right or that I did not look at all the variables. Like how I thought I could repair the oven because it wouldn’t work for me. I was sure the oven was broken and the thought I had to repair it, I did not realize that I was operating in incorrectly. This caused me to destroy a perfectly good oven and wasting money on a new one. Some strategies I have tried to counteract this impediment have proven successful when used. One thing I try to do is instead of making a decision immediately I take time and step away from the issue and think it

After taking a close look at how I obtain my news on a regular day, I concluded that my primary news source is IRC networks of all things. An example of this is the tragic death of Satoru Iwata of Nintendo that happened yesterday. I was discussing something completely unrelated to Iwata when someone messaged us, sharing the news. From there, we frantically Googled, thinking it was some sort of prank at first. Once it sank in, we realized it really happened. Overall, my friends keep me posted, sometimes even while I am watching TV. I try to get multiple points of view, knowing the people around me have blatant subjective biases. In my opinion, yes, it is necessary to see more than one source before stopping for the day when it comes to news.

Biases made a huge impact in this case where the companies were just too overconfident which is the overconfident bias. Overconfident bias is the tendency to be overconfident about estimates or forecasts( Kreitner & Kinicki 2013). BP ignored the warning signs due to their overconfidence and incompetence. As explained above BP's and Transocean's approach was more characteristic of the garbage can model because decision making was haphazard and sloppy and caused lives to be lost due to their being no orderly series of steps taken for making

Being optimistic is the main principle for most people. We may often hear the statement about “be an optimist, not a pessimist!” shouted by people. Sometimes you do it for yourself too. When facing such a failure or problem, this will not only help to relieve your heart. Being optimistic will help someone to be healthy in physical and mental. An optimist will find the best way in any circumstance and hope for every good thing can come to him/her. You may have gone through thousands of hard times. However, if you are a born optimist then you will not care of anything destructing you.

Another application in which an optimistic attitude has proven to be very beneficial has been in academics. Notably, there have been classes in which assignments were difficult for me and led to less than sufficient grades. Even though I was disappointed with my poor performance, I always stayed optimistic about bringing the grades back up. The one time that stood out among