McCombs School of Business

Optimism Bias

The optimism bias can lead us to neglect responsible actions and moral accountability by overestimating positive outcomes and underestimating negative ones.

Most of us exhibit the optimism bias, which is also known as the over-optimism bias. Psychologist Tali Sharot defines it as “the inclination to overestimate the likelihood of encountering positive events in the future and to underestimate the likelihood of experiencing negative events.”

The optimism bias causes us to think that our lives will go better than a rational person would forecast. We predict that we’ll enjoy financial and romantic success and live long and healthy lives. We also predict that the car wrecks, divorces, and cancers that happen to other people will not happen to us.

The optimism bias can contribute to not being our best moral selves. We overestimate how helpful, kind, generous, and honest we will be in the future. We just assume that we will be “good people,” so we may not work diligently and thoughtfully to actually be good people.

The optimism bias can also cause us to be unduly hopeful about our chances of avoiding the impact of disasters like climate change and COVID-19. We may not take the steps that responsible citizens would take to minimize the impact of global catastrophes to ourselves and to others.

So, while being upbeat is generally considered a positive trait, if we are not vigilant, the optimism bias can contribute to us not being our best moral selves.

Geoffrey Beattie, “Optimism Bias and Climate Change,” British Academy Review 12-15 (Summer 2018).

Iro Fragkaki et al., “Human Responses to Covid-19: The Role of Optimism Bias, Perceived Severity, and Anxiety,” Personality and Individual Differences 176: 110781 (2021).

Benjamin Kuper-Smith et al., “Risk Perception and Optimism During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Royal Society Open Science, at https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210904 (2020).

Alvaro Pascual-Leone et al., “Beware of Optimism Bias in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Annals of Neurology 89(3): 423-425 (2021).

Tali Sharot, The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain (2011).

Tali Sharot, “The Optimism Bias,” Current Biology 21(23): R941-R945 (2011).

Neil Weinstein, “Unrealistic Optimism About Future Life Events,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39(5): 806-820 (1980).

Overconfidence Bias

Overconfidence Bias

The Overconfidence Bias is the tendency people have to be more confident in their own abilities, including making moral judgments, than objective facts would justify.

Cognitive Bias

Cognitive Bias

Cognitive biases are errors in thinking that affect people’s decision-making in virtually every situation.