If You're an Optimist, You're Not Alone!

Don’t you love it when a plan comes together? A plan as simple as organising a day out with your family or cooking a great meal or more significantly, organising a special surprise birthday party or escaping to your favourite holiday getaway can make your day and put you on top of the world, so long as, all goes well. Why the proviso? English poet, Robert Burns once wrote:

“The best laid schemes of mice and men oft go awry…”

Yes, sometimes our best laid plans can come unstuck and in spite of our best efforts, all does not go well. Making the best of a bad situation is often all that’s left for us to do, because the situation is, what it is. I recently came across some funny statements made on actual insurance claims that give some indication of how bad a day can go in the blink of an eye (apparently). In the drivers own words:

“Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have.”
“I had been shopping for plants all day and was on my way home. As I reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision and I did not see the other car.”
“As I approached the intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no sign had ever appeared before, making me unable to avoid the accident. “
"The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him."
"I was thrown from my car as it left the road, and was later found in a ditch by some stray cows."
And my favourite:
“In my attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.”

I am a self confessed optimist and always try to look on the bright side of life. I have discovered though, that I am not the only one who thinks this way. Hard to believe that in this day and age of instant bad news, 24/7 and despite the barrage of bad news, it appears that most of us believe that things will turn out okay. While the world around us might be disintegrating, our personal view of our own life is still amazingly optimistic. Rather ironic don’t you think or maybe not. Maybe we are just far more complacent about our own personal circumstances than those of people around us.

I was heartened to read in a recent article by Tali Sharot in the June 6, Time magazine, called ‘The Optimism Bias’, that most of us are optimists. It turns out that we are hardwired to be this way, because of the evolution of our brain over time. Recent research shows that we expect things to turn out better than they wind up being and we seriously underestimate the chances of bad things happening to us, while we tend to overestimate good things happening to us and our family.

The fact that we believe the future will be much better than the present is called the ‘optimism bias’ according to Sharot and transcends all races, religion, socioeconomic status and cultures. This optimism bias actually protects us and inspires us and gives us hope. This faith helps motivate us to achieve our goals. No wonder our vision of our future is rosier than the reality of the situation. Take for example our perception of our own driving ability. Did you know that 93 percent of people surveyed believed that they were in the top 50th percentile for driving ability? Perhaps not so surprising given some of the statements made on the insurance claims up above.

Scientific evidence shows that where people are more optimistic, their chances of recovery from serious illness are more positive that those people who are pessimistic. According to Sharot, a study conducted with heart-disease patients showed that optimistic patients were more likely to take vitamins, eat low-fat diets and exercise and were more likely to reduce their overall coronary risks. A study of cancer patients revealed also, that pessimistic patients were more likely to die within eight months than optimistic patients of a similar age, status and health conditions. These studies beg the question,” Can optimism change reality?” Well according to another study conducted with students, it seems we can effect change in our reality.

Cognitive neuroscientist, Sara Bengtsson found that students’ brains responded differently to the mistakes they made depending on whether they were primed with certain words. She found that when she induced certain expectations with college students by using words such as ‘smart’,’ intelligent’ and ‘clever ‘just before asking them to perform a test that these students performed better than those students who heard words like ‘stupid’, and ‘ignorant’ before their test. Not surprisingly then, students performed better after hearing an affirmative message and she found that the brain activity was greater after a word like clever was used because the student was primed to perform well. When the word stupid was used, the brain expected to do poorly and did not show signs of surprise or conflict when it made an error.

Interestingly, the research shows that optimists work longer hours and tend to earn more. What are the implications of all of this information? Well as Sharot argues, the good news is that awareness of our optimism rarely shatters the illusion. I guess we are just better prepared for any eventuality. The glass remains half full, because we still believe that we will remain healthy, yet most of us take out health insurance and while for some of us the sun is always shining, we still take an umbrella with us, just in case.

Life’s not perfect but as Nicholas Butler points out:

“Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress.”

Karon Graham