The Influences of Outcome Desirability on Optimism

结果期望对乐观情绪的影响爱荷华大学保罗·温契尔人们以相当程度的准确度预测未来的能力对日常生活和生存都至关重要。想想一个青少年对吸烟后果的预测，一个企业家对新业务成功的预测，或者一个指挥官对战斗结果的预测。在这些情况下，对未来的不准确评估——比如对一个理想的结果过于乐观——可能会产生负面甚至悲剧性的后果。这个项目调查人们对结果的偏好（例如，希望新业务成功）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。人们普遍讨论的一厢情愿概念描述了结果偏好的一种可能影响，即对结果的渴望会使人们对结果的乐观情绪膨胀。然而，偏好影响的另一种可能性也相当可信。也就是说，人们可能会对理想结果的可能性变得过于悲观，也许是因为他们想避免当负面结果出乎意料而不是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见的积极和消极方面。概括地说，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。之前大多数调查欲望偏差的研究都集中在人们对随机事件的离散结果预测上。本项目的实验侧重于非随机结果，并从信息处理的角度设计。实验测试了可取性效应的可能机制解释，特别是增强聚焦和确认偏差解释。特别注意理解个体差异的可取性效应。这些发现不仅有助于心理学理论的发展，而且在预测人们的健康行为、投资决策和投票行为方面也有潜在的应用前景。_________________________________

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._________________________________