In this study, 200 college undergraduate students were given a list of 42 events to read and imagine. One of the first studies to experimentally explore the optimism bias took place at Rutgers University in 1980. Pessimism refers to the expectation that bad things will happen. Optimism, by definition, is the expectation that good things will happen. The optimism bias is the cognitive bias that leads us to overestimate the likelihood that a positive event will happen in our lives and underestimate the likelihood that a negative event will occur in our futures (Sharot, 2011). If you’ve ever had a conversation like this with yourself- one in which you underestimate the likelihood that negative events will impact your life – you have demonstrated the optimism bias. You’ll never get in that car accident and wind up as a trauma patient. You’ll never get sick like the fictitious characters of whom you’ve grown fond. You think about your own life and conclude that, at the end of the day, none of the tragedies in this medical soap opera could ever happen to you. As you exhaust your box of tissues, you wonder how producer Shonda Rhimes concocts these episodes. You watch episode after episode until you reach the heart wrenching season finale when a different favorite character dies in a tragic accident. You are shocked to find out that Izzie, a young doctor on the show, has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. You’re watching Grey’s Anatomy, and you’re in the middle of season 5. You make some popcorn, grab your laptop and pull up Netflix. It’s a Saturday afternoon and you’ve decided to reward yourself with a lazy day. Imagine you’ve just finished a long, tiring week of classes.
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