Wishful Thinking

Wishful thinking is the formation of a belief based on what would be pleasing to imagine rather than on evidence, rationality or reality, a product of resolving an underlying conflict between what a person believes and what a person desires. The methodologies used to examine wishful thinking are diverse, and different disciplines and schools of thought examine related mechanisms such as neural circuitry, human cognition and emotion, types of bias, procrastination, motivation, optimism, attention and environment; the concept has been examined as a fallacy and is related to the separate concept of wishful seeing. Some psychologists hold that positive thinking of this kind can positively influence a person's own behavior and so bring about genuinely better results, an idea known as the Pygmalion effect, and studies have consistently shown that, holding everything else equal, people display unrealistic optimism, predicting that a positive outcome is more likely than a negative one, though research also suggests that under certain circumstances, such as when a perceived threat increases, the reverse phenomenon can occur instead.