Are we born to be optimistic, rather than realistic? Tali Sharot shares new research that suggests our brains are wired to look on the bright side -- and how that can be both dangerous and beneficial. Talk by Tali Sharot.
I never understood the appeal of Friday before, to me it was still a work day. I always looked forward to Saturday myself and scratched my head about TGIF.
It stand to reason that optimism bias is a survival adaptation. In a hunter-gatherer society, we would have to be much more opportunistic when it comes to finding food or a mate, which would mean treating every opportunity as if it were nearly a sure thing. However, I think there's a cultural bias today toward pessimism, at least when it comes to our assessment of other people, as people tend to associate pessimism with intelligence (even when it's inaccurate).
I also think that our biases when presented with new information depends on how the information is presented. Obviously, experience carries more weight than cold statistics. If you tell me that there's X% chance I'll get into a car accident, I won't drive that much more carefully tomorrow, but if I actually get into a car accident, the NEXT time I get behind the wheel, I'll be extremely careful.
You said: "Obviously, experience carries more weight than cold statistics.". I thought: while that's true, why is it obvious? Is it a wise decision to only change your expectations when you've experienced something yourself? But then I answered my own question: Yes, that's the smart thing to do. Because the fact that I'm in an accident not only says something about the risk of an accident, it says something about me and my driving skills. So I have more relevant information.
I'd be optimistic about meeting this gorgeous talker if ya know what i mean ;) Ok, now we got that out of the way this was actually an interesting talk, interesting how it seemed to cross over into locus of control without mentioning it, suggesting those with a high internal locus to be optimists and vice versa. Not convinced this is the case though, an optimist with a low internal locus may be just as little motivated as a pessimistic one. Makes sense that optimism would enhance motivation tho
Isn't the penguin that is wearing a parachute pessimistic, because if you have low expectations it wont hurt as much? I think she has a bad argument because she just called people who are pessimistic are dumb. From the description: "...and how that can be both dangerous and beneficial." More like "...and how optimism are smart, and pessimism are dumb"
She's one of the worst hacks in academia. She became known after her publication in Nature Neuroscience (doi:10.1038/nn.2949) which only got accepted because she had Raymond J Dolan as co-author. Her stimuli only included negative outcomes (should have include positive outcome for a balanced interpretation), which ranged from exceptionally rare ("needing a prosthetic joint") to very rare ("getting Parkinson's disease"). Her results are completely confounded by the lack of validation of these target events. Good science would have involved a good mix of rare and frequent events, positive and negative.
