Optimistic biases are more likely to emerge for events that are controllable (Klein & Helweg-Larsen, 2002) and for which people have stereotypes of the typical person who experiences the event (Weinstein, 1980). The bias appears in a wide variety of disparate samples including adolescents (Quadrel, Fischhoff, & Davis, 1993), community residents of varying age and socioeconomic status (Weinstein, 1987), prostitutes (van der Velde, van der Pligt, & Hooykaas, 1994), women marines (Gerrard, Gibbons, & Warner, 1991), and smokers (Weinstein, 1998). Optimistic bias has been demonstrated across a wide variety of positive and negative events, with most work focusing on health problems such as lung cancer, HIV infection, and alcoholism (for reviews see Helweg-Larsen & Shepperd, 2001 Hoorens, 1993 Klein & Weinstein, 1997). Subsequent work has attempted to evaluate the prevalence of this bias as well as its determinants and moderators. As noted later, optimistic bias has been more frequently defined using the comparative definition above due to greater methodological ease. Other terms representing the same construct include "unrealistic optimism," "illusion of invulnerability," "illusion of unique invulnerability," "optimism bias," and "personal fable." It is also possible to be optimistically biased by being overconfident about the objective chances of experiencing a positive event (or avoiding a negative event), irrespective of how one's chances compare with those of one's peers. Because a majority of individuals in a group cannot be above (or below) the mean unless the distribution is highly skewed, these findings represented a bias at the level of the group.
The bias was first demonstrated by Weinstein (1980), who reported that a majority of college students believed their chances of events such as divorce and having a drinking problem to be lower than that of other students, and their chances of events such as owning their own home and living past 80 years of age to be higher than that of other students.
Compare Lake Wobegon effect, overconfidence effect.Optimistic bias is commonly defined as the mistaken belief that one's chances of experiencing a negative event are lower (or a positive event higher) than that of one's peers. See also depressive realism, hypomanic episode. Weinstein asked students to estimate the relative likelihoods of various events happening to them, compared to the likelihoods of the same events happening to their peers, and his results showed that they rated their chances of experiencing positive events, such as owning your own home, receiving a good job offer before graduation, and living past 80, to be significantly above the average for students of the same sex at the same university, and their chances of experiencing negative events, such as having a heart attack before age 40, being sued by someone, and being the victim of a mugging, to be significantly below average. It was first reported in 1925 by the US psychologist F(rederick) H(ansen) Lund (1894–1965) and in 1938 by the US psychologist (Albert) Hadley Cantril (1906–69), and it came to prominence in 1980 when it was studied rigorously and named by the US psychologist Neil D(avid) Weinstein (born 1945) in an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. A judgemental bias that tends to affect people's subjective estimates of the likelihood of future events in their lives, causing them to overestimate the likelihood of positive or desirable events and to underestimate the likelihood of negative or undesirable events.
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