The costs of optimism and the benefits of pessimism.
The costs of optimism and the benefits of pessimism.
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乐观的代价和悲观的好处。
作者：
Kate Sweeny;J. Shepperd
研究表明，乐观的感觉很好。但是，它总是感觉很好吗？我们认为，乐观和悲观的好处（和成本）取决于它们的时机。一项关于考试成绩评估的研究显示，在控制了实际考试表现之后，乐观的预期与人们在反馈之前的感受无关，这与乐观“感觉良好”的普遍看法相反。“此外，乐观在反馈后也有代价--那些在反馈前预测分数会更高的参与者在得知自己的分数后感觉更糟。最后，人们似乎意识到了乐观的潜在成本那些在反馈前预测会得到更高分数的参与者也预期如果他们表现不佳会经历更大的失望。这些发现表明，人们可能会主动管理他们的期望，以避免乐观的成本。
Research suggests that optimism feels good. However, does it always feel good? We suggest that the benefits (and costs) of optimism and pessimism depend on their timing. A study of exam score estimates revealed that, after controlling for actual exam performance, optimistic expectations are unrelated to how people feel immediately before feedback, in contrast to the common wisdom that optimism "feels good." Furthermore, optimism has costs after feedback-participants who predicted higher scores before feedback felt worse after learning their scores. Finally, people seem to be aware of the potential costs of optimism-participants who predicted higher scores before feedback also anticipated experiencing greater disappointment should they perform poorly. These findings suggest that people may proactively manage their expectations to avoid the costs of optimism.