The Influences of Outcome Desirability on Optimism

SES-0720349《结果可取性对最优的影响》，保罗·D·温施特，爱荷华州大学保罗·D·温施特：人们以某种程度的精确度预测未来的能力，对日常运作和生存至关重要。想象一下，一个青少年预测吸烟的后果，一个企业家预测一家新企业的成功，或者一个指挥官预测一场战斗的结果。在这些情况下，评估未来的不准确--例如对首选结果过于乐观--可能会产生负面甚至悲剧性的后果。这个项目调查了人们对某一结果的S偏好(例如，希望一家新企业取得成功)对该结果的主观可能性的影响。这种潜在的影响被称为可取性偏差。结果偏好的一种可能的影响被广泛讨论的一厢情愿的概念所描述，这表明对结果的渴望会夸大人们对结果的乐观。S说。然而，偏好影响的另一种可能性也是相当可信的。也就是说，人们可能会对首选结果的可能性变得过于悲观，或许是因为他们想避免在负面结果出乎意料而非预期时出现的额外失望或其他困难。这个项目调查了可取性偏差的积极和消极两方面。广义地说，这个项目调查结果偏好是否、何时以及如何导致过度乐观和/或过度悲观。以往对期望偏差的研究大多集中在人们对随机确定的事件的离散结果预测上。本项目中的实验侧重于非随机结果，是从信息处理的角度设计的。这些实验测试了对期望效应的可能的机械解释，特别是增强焦点和确认偏向的解释。特别注意了解个体在合意效应上的差异。这些发现不仅将有助于心理学理论的发展，而且它们还将在预测S的健康行为、投资决策和投票行为方面具有潜在的应用。

SES - 0720349 The Influences of Outcome Desirability on OptimismWindschitl, Paul D. University of IowaThe ability of people to anticipate the future with some substantial degree of accuracy is critical for everyday functioning as well as survival. Consider an adolescent anticipating the consequences of smoking, an entrepreneur anticipating the success of a new business, or a commander anticipating the outcome of a battle. In these cases, inaccuracies in assessing the future--such as being overoptimistic about a preferred outcome--can have negative or even tragic consequences. This project investigates the impact people''s preferences regarding an outcome (e.g., hoping a new business will succeed) have on the subjective likelihood of that outcome. This potential impact is called the desirability bias. One possible influence of outcome preferences is described by the popularly discussed notion of wishful thinking, which suggests that desire for an outcome can inflate people''s optimism about that outcome. However, an alternative possibility for the influence of preferences is also quite plausible. Namely, people might become overly pessimistic about the likelihood of a preferred outcome, perhaps because they want to avoid the extra disappointment or other hardships that occur when a negative outcome is unexpected rather than expected. This project investigates both the positive and negative sides of the desirability bias. Broadly stated, this project investigates whether, when, and how outcome preferences cause over-optimism and/or over-pessimism. Most previous research investigating desirability biases has focused on people''s discrete outcome predictions about events that are randomly determined. The experiments in this project focus on non-random outcomes and were designed from an information-processing perspective. The experiments test possible mechanistic accounts of desirability effects, particularly the enhanced-focalism and confirmation-bias accounts. Special attention is paid to understanding individual differences in desirability effects. Not only will the findings help theory development within psychology, but they will also have potential applications for predicting people''s health behavior, investment decisions, and voting behavior._________________________________