Every now and then, we all find ourselves engaging in wishful thinking. But when does it tend to occur most frequently, and when might it actually prove detrimental? A recent study by the University of Amsterdam (UvA), provides clear evidence that in situations marked by heightened insecurity and anxiety, individuals are more prone to adopting an overly optimistic outlook—so much so that it may hinder us from taking necessary action.
“People aren’t purely truth-seekers—many beliefs are influenced by emotions and driven by what is pleasant or comforting. Like belief in an afterlife or optimism about health outcomes,” the researchers explain.
Self-deception
Understanding the intricacies of self-deception and its underlying causes proves challenging in real-world scenarios. To shed light on this phenomenon, the study employed a series of experiments involving over 1,700 participants, both in laboratory settings and online.
During these experiments, participants were briefly presented with various patterns, such as sets of differently oriented stripes or colored dots, and were tasked with identifying the patterns they perceived. Some of these patterns were associated with negative outcomes, intended to induce anxiety, such as a mild electric shock (conducted in the lab) or monetary loss (online).
Consistently, the study revealed that participants were less inclined to accurately identify patterns linked to potential shocks or financial losses. Instead, they tended to perceive patterns that aligned with more desirable outcomes. While previous research primarily focused on wishful thinking concerning positive outcomes, yielding mixed results, this study distinctly highlights how the negative emotion of anxiety regarding an outcome can drive wishful thinking.
Increasing realism
Furthermore, the researchers explored interventions aimed at fostering a more realistic outlook among participants. One approach involved simplifying the patterns to enhance their recognizability. The findings indicated that reducing uncertainty did, indeed, mitigate wishful thinking tendencies.
Another intervention entailed offering greater potential rewards for accurate pattern recognition. Surprisingly, this intervention had minimal impact, except in cases where participants could gather additional evidence about the specific pattern presented to them. This underscores the nuanced relationship between incentives and cognitive biases, suggesting that increased clarity may be more effective in curbing wishful thinking than mere incentive enhancement.
“When people had more time to collect evidence and were better rewarded for a correct answer, they became more realistic,” the researchers explain.
In the final phase of the experiments, where positive outcomes replaced negative ones, participants displayed no signs of wishful thinking. The absence of such tendencies suggests that mitigating negative emotions can indeed diminish over-optimism.
This observation underscores the significant role emotions play in shaping cognitive biases, highlighting the potential effectiveness of strategies aimed at alleviating negative effects to promote more realistic perceptions and judgments.
“Wishful thinking is important for humans in coping with anxiety about possible future events,” the researchers concede. The concern is situations in which too much optimism stops people from getting the information they need or from acting in a way that would benefit them.
“People can get too hopeful when things are uncertain. We observe this happening with climate change, when financial markets fluctuate, and even in personal health situations when people avoid medical help because they think everything will be fine. We need to know more about when wishful thinking helps and when it hurts.”
