Research Hit: Wishful Thinking Blocks Realism When We Need It Most
A recent study shows that wishful thinking is higher when negative outcomes are also higher - leading to greater harm.
So If I’ve got that right, this is saying we engage in more wishful thinking when we shouldn't be!?
Yes, that is the outcome of this study published a few weeks ago now. What’s more this can prevent us from taking essential action!
Oh dear - explain how this comes about and was researched.
Yes, this was quite a cool experiment. Jan Engelmann and colleagues of the University of Amsterdam wanted to find out whether people do indeed become more optimistic when facing potential hardships. Some studies have shown this, others have been less clear.
So they conducted research online and in the lab with an impressive 1’700 people. The participants where shown patterns of dots on a screen and some were designed to induce anxiety though negative outcomes. In this case the negative outcome was a small electric shock (if in the lab) or losing money.
Ok and what should happen - surely we should learn the negative pattern and avoid it?!
Sure, if we had unambiguous patterns, then it is clear there would be a simple association with a negative outcome, and it would be easy to avoid. However, if the patterns are less clear we might engage in wishful thinking and assume, hope, interpret patterns as being less harmful.
Indeed that is precisely what this research showed. When patterns were less clear despite there being negative outcomes (which should make us more cautious) people on average engaged in more optimism, wishful thinking, and rated the patterns incorrectly thereby getting more negative outcomes!
Oh wow! And how can we change this?
That is also what they looked at. First off, we can interpret this to show that in situations of anxiety and unclarity, we become overly optimistic and this can lead to bad decisions for us personally. It seems to be kind of a defence mechanism - which, however, doesn’t work.
To counteract that the researchers adjusted the variables and found two ways to increase realism.
Make the patterns clearer - in the face of clarity we, kind of obviously, choose the good response over the bad response. Or avoid the bad responses more.
Increasing rewards for a good response did not have an immediate effect until more time was given to analyse the patterns. So rewarding good outcomes and giving time to analyse also pushed people towards making more realistic and better decisions.
So create clarity and reward the positive?
Yes, however, in society we are often put in anxious or worrying situations with lots of unclarity and little obvious reward. In these situations more people will engage in wishful thinking - to their own detriment - alas!
But in our lives we can aim to think more, analyse, and remind yourself that overconfidence and optimism may not be such a great thing. I reported on this previously:
Reference
Jan B. Engelmann, Maël Lebreton, Nahuel A. Salem-Garcia, et al.
Anticipatory Anxiety and Wishful Thinking.
American Economic Review, 2024; 114 (4): 926
DOI: 10.1257/aer.20191068