The Negative Effect Of Optimism Bias

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Optimism bias is defined as the belief that the future will be better than the present and past; the individual is optimistic about the future. The individual also overestimates the chances that good things will happen in the future and underestimates the chances of something bad to happen. The optimism bias can have a positive effect as it keeps the individual from falling into depression. Being realistic is often difficult because in reality we are going to have many bad things happen to us but we don’t want to admit this as it is a depression matter. An individual is going to lose their job, lose someone they love, get into a car accident, or make a terrible mistake but thinking about these things isn’t particularly healthy for the mind. …show more content…

The negative effect of the optimism bias is that it can provide the individual with an unrealistic perspective. The individual believes that they can somehow influence what happens and they choose to believe that their future is full of good, positive experiences. They don’t consider the fact that their probability of bad things happening is lower than the actual probability; the individual focuses on avoiding defeat and heartache. I commit the optimism bias when I think about

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