The Optimism Bias

Are you a glass half full or glass half empty person?

I read a couple of articles this week which both suggested that human beings have a bias towards optimism. Supposedly it is something that distinguishes us from other animals. Furthermore, capitalists claim it is a positive factor in business, since it makes us good at the creative destruction required for progress.

This got me thinking. Are we really optimistic? More than other animals? Our cat is certainly optimistic, always exploring, curious, living in hope. I don’t think I’m more optimistic than the cat. Still, that is what the research has discovered, and I’ve certainly evolved to be brainier than the cat, for better or worse, and perhaps my optimism is one reason why.

I certainly accept that a degree of optimism is healthy for us. The same research claimed that without our bias to optimism, we would all be depressed most of the time. I have certainly seen the converse of that. One of the things depressed people lose is their optimism. There is a certain inevitability of failure when failure is expected, and that is how depressed people tend to think.

Yet optimism plainly has its downside as well. If we all threw ourselves off tall buildings, in hoping that we would be OK, our life expectancy would suffer. Yet in many things we are a bit reckless. We go skiing, despite evidence from statistics and from our own eyes – how often do you see people carted off in ambulances, and what makes you think that will not be you next time? We place massive trust in fellow human beings every time we get into a car, yet it doesn’t stop us speeding.

Gambling is also pretty reckless, yet it seems to be a human urge that is hard to control. And I’m not even sure about the claim of the capitalists. I have seen crazy, reckless behaviour again and again in business. Almost every acquisition I have been involved in has become a sort of animal hunt that eventually tosses reason out of the window. And what about all those dot com business models that started with the wonderful naïve assumption, that if just one per cent of possible users became users, we would all be rich?

What about with relationships? Almost one in two marriages in Western societies now ends in divorce. Globally, a far large share than 50% ends in misery for one or both parties. Yet somehow we all think our own marriages are different, that those statistics don’t apply to us.

Then there is health. Much though the tabloids love to play on our fears by reporting daily about the dangers of some foodstuff or other, our behaviour usually suggests we believe we are invincible. How many people die each die without making a will? How many people (especially us men, myself included) don’t bother with health checks and would rather ignore symptoms than face up to them?

And our last great optimism is our faith. Even people with no religious belief like to think there might be something waiting for us after our death. Looking at the evidence, that seems heroically optimistic really. There seems to be even less evidence for another common belief, that somehow some God has chosen us individually from the crowd to look after.

Some of these examples of optimism are healthy, some less so. It is not so clear cut whether the net effect of all of them is good or bad, both for us as individuals or for our species overall.

There are other factors in play as well as optimism. Curiosity is generally good, if it doesn’t become envy or obsession with others. A sense of adventure, with limits around high buildings and the like, must be good too. Even faith has its advantages. Whether there is an afterlife or not, a belief system helps us to stay humble and recognise and accept our ignorance and relative powerlessness. It is also good to try to keep a balanced view of the bigger picture – there are cycles in life, and things will sometimes get better, sometimes worse.

On the reverse side, superstition or irrational exuberance probably have more downsides than up. You don’t meet too many well-balanced gamblers, and the partners of gamblers suffer even more.

What is clearly true is that a sunny nature is a blessing. Whether my own glass is half full or half empty, it is always more fun to be with people from the half full persuasion.

In business, I am not so sure. Optimism is all very well in the marketing department, but cold, hard numbers have their place too.

Are there difference between nations and cultures? Scandinavians are known to have a prevalence for depression and suicide. It seems to be accepted that this is related to light deprivation in the winters. Portuguese are also said to be a bit sombre, while some Latin nations are sunnier, and Americans are also known for their optimism.

One of my favourite bits of market research is about American optimism, and it goes a long way to explain US politics. When Europeans and Americans are asked what class or income bracket they belong to today, both groups answer quite realistically in accordance with the facts. But asked what class or income bracket they will belong to ten years into the future, Europeans tend to assume little change, while most Americans see themselves moving up a rung or two.

Now that is optimism. It explains why taxation of the wealthy wins fewer votes stateside. Does it explain US economic success? I’m not so sure.

Another group of relentlessly optimistic people are those who succeed in sales jobs. I read that the human characteristic most correlated with success in sales is the ability to be rejected on Monday yet still turn up smiling on Tuesday. If you are thinking of career in sales, or looking to recruit sales people, bear this fact in mind.

Again, there might be more than optimism in play. Fear of rejection may be lower in sales people. They may have the same degree of optimism about whether a sale will come off, but may have a different response to failure or anticipated failure, being ready to brush it off and move on.

I’m always careful about gender generalisation, but this last quality may be a male one. If so, it is a good thing, as us guys seem to have more things going against us than for us (listening, empathy, persistence, etc.), so we need some advantages. It might start with the dating game. Even nowadays, it is usually the job of the male to initiate the various phases of the relationship. That places us right in line for rejection. Yet we bounce back again the next day.

What is that? Optimism? Arrogance? Hardness? Whatever it is, the species needs it to prolong itself. And in the end, any optimism bias probably comes down to simple Darwinism. Which is one reason why I’m a bit sceptical about the claim that we have more optimism than other animals, cats or otherwise. They have to evolve too.

So perhaps we ought to wish for a cocktail of attributes. A sunny nature, and the luck to find others with a sunny nature. Some curiosity, sense of adventure, humility, recognition of ignorance. A dose of bounce-back-ability. But not too much recklessness or superstition.