Optimism Bias

Optimism bias, also called unrealistic optimism, is the tendency for a person to believe that they personally are less likely to experience a negative event, and more likely to experience a positive one, than objective evidence or other people's actual outcomes would predict. It has been documented across many domains, including estimates of personal health risks, likelihood of divorce and vulnerability to accidents, and the psychologist Neil Weinstein, whose 1980 study first systematically demonstrated the pattern, linked it to a broader tendency toward self-enhancing comparative judgment. The bias is considered relatively resistant to correction, since providing people with accurate statistical information about risk often fails to substantially change their personal risk estimates.