Name: 【TED】Tali Sharot: The optimism bias (The optimism bias | Tali Sharot)
Uploaded: 2014-12-11T12:28:23.000Z
Duration: 17 min 41 s
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Adverbs of manner

I'm going to talk to you about optimism -- or more precisely

the optimism bias. It's a cognitive illusion that we've been studying in my lab for the past few years

It's our tendency to overestimate our likelihood of experiencing good events in our lives

and underestimate our likelihood of experiencing bad events

So we underestimate our likelihood of suffering from cancer, being in a car accident

We overestimate our longevity, our career prospects.

In short, we're more optimistic than realistic, but we are oblivious to the fact.

Take marriage for example. In the Western world, divorce rates are about 40 percent.

That means that out of five married couples, two will end up splitting their assets

But when you ask newlyweds about their own likelihood of divorce, they estimate it at zero percent

And even divorce lawyers, who should really know better

hugely underestimate their own likelihood of divorce.

So it turns out that optimists are not less likely to divorce

In the words of Samuel Johnson, "Remarriage is the triumph of hope over experience."

So if we're married, we're more likely to have kids.

And we all think our kids will be especially talented.

This, by the way, is my two-year-old nephew, Guy

And I just want to make it absolutely clear that he's a really bad example of the optimism bias

And I'm not alone. Out of four British people,

three said that they were optimistic about the future of their own families. That's 75 percent.

But only 30 percent said that they thought families in general are doing better than a few generations ago.

And this is a really important point, because we're optimistic about ourselves

we're optimistic about our kids, we're optimistic about our families

but we're not so optimistic about the guy sitting next to us,

and we're somewhat pessimistic about the fate of our fellow citizens and the fate of our country

But private optimism about our own personal future remains persistent.

And it doesn't mean that we think things will magically turn out okay

but rather that we have the unique ability to make it so.

Now I'm a scientist, I do experiments. So to show you what I mean

I'm going to do an experiment here with you. Okay.

So I'm going to give you a list of abilities and characteristics,

and I want you to think for each of these abilities where you stand relative to the rest of the population.

The first one is getting along well with others. Who here believes they're at the bottom 25 percent?

Okay, that's about 10 people out of 1,500. Who believes they're at the top 25 percent?

That's most of us here. Okay, now do the same for your driving ability.

How interesting are you? How attractive are you?

How honest are you? And finally, how modest are you?

So most of us put ourselves above average on most of these abilities.

Now this is statistically impossible. We can't all be better than everyone else.

But if we believe we're better than the other guy,

well that means that we're more likely to get that promotion, to remain married,

because we're more social, more interesting.

And it's a global phenomenon. The optimism bias has been observed in many different countries

in Western cultures, in non-Western cultures

in females and males, in kids, in the elderly. It's quite widespread.

But the question is, is it good for us? So some people say no

Some people say the secret to happiness is low expectations

I think the logic goes something like this: If we don't expect greatness,

if we don't expect to find love and be healthy and successful,

well we're not going to be disappointed when these things don't happen.

And if we're not disappointed when good things don't happen, and we're pleasantly surprised when they do, we will be happy.

So it's a very good theory, but it turns out to be wrong for three reasons

Number one: Whatever happens, whether you succeed or you fail, people with high expectations always feel better.

Because how we feel when we get dumped or win employee of the month depends on how we interpret that event.

The psychologists Margaret Marshall and John Brown studied students with high and low expectations.

And they found that when people with high expectations succeed, they attribute that success to their own traits.

I'm a genius, therefore I got an A, therefore I'll get an A again and again in the future

When they failed, it wasn't because they were dumb, but because the exam just happened to be unfair.

Next time they will do better. People with low expectations do the opposite.

So when they failed it was because they were dumb

and when they succeeded it was because the exam just happened to be really easy. Next time reality would catch up with them. So they felt worse.

Number two: Regardless of the outcome, the pure act of anticipation makes us happy.

The behavioral economist George Lowenstein asked students in his university to imagine getting a passionate kiss from a celebrity

Then he said, "How much are you willing to pay to get a kiss from a celebrity if the kiss was delivered immediately

in three hours, in 24 hours, in three days, in one year, in 10 years?

He found that the students were willing to pay the most not to get a kiss immediately, but to get a kiss in three days

they were willing to pay extra in order to wait

Now they weren't willing to wait a year or 10 years; no one wants an aging celebrity

But three days seemed to be the optimum amount.

So why is that? Well if you get the kiss now, it's over and done with

But if you get the kiss in three days, well that's three days of jittery anticipation, the thrill of the wait.

The students wanted that time to imagine where is it going to happen, how is it going to happen.

This is, by the way, why people prefer Friday to Sunday

It's a really curious fact, because Friday is a day of work and Sunday is a day of pleasure,

so you'd assume that people will prefer Sunday, but they don't.

It's not because they really, really like being in the office and they can't stand strolling in the park or having a lazy brunch.

We know that, because when you ask people about their ultimate favorite day of the week,

surprise, surprise, Saturday comes in at first, then Friday, then Sunday. People prefer Friday because Friday brings with it the anticipation of the weekend ahead

all the plans that you have. On Sunday, the only thing you can look forward to is the work week.

So optimists are people who expect more kisses in their future, more strolls in the park.

And that anticipation enhances their wellbeing

In fact, without the optimism bias, we would all be slightly depressed. People with mild depression, they don't have a bias when they look into the future

They're actually more realistic than healthy individuals.

But individuals with severe depression, they have a pessimistic bias.

So they tend to expect the future to be worse than it ends up being.

So optimism changes subjective reality. The way we expect the world to be changes the way we see it.

But it also changes objective reality. It acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

. And that is the third reason why lowering your expectations will not make you happy.

Controlled experiments have shown that optimism is not only related to success

it leads to success. Optimism leads to success in academia and sports and politics.

And maybe the most surprising benefit of optimism is health. If we expect the future to be bright, stress and anxiety are reduced.

So all in all, optimism has lots of benefits.

But the question that was really confusing to me was, how do we maintain optimism in the face of reality?

As an neuroscientist, this was especially confusing, because according to all the theories out there

when your expectations are not met, you should alter them.

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【TED】Tali Sharot: The optimism bias (The optimism bias | Tali Sharot)

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