title: How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of reality.
abstract: Unrealistic optimism is a pervasive human trait that influences domains ranging from personal relationships to politics and finance. How people maintain unrealistic optimism, despite frequently encountering information that challenges those biased beliefs, is unknown. We examined this question and found a marked asymmetry in belief updating. Participants updated their beliefs more in response to information that was better than expected than to information that was worse. This selectivity was mediated by a relative failure to code for errors that should reduce optimism. Distinct regions of the prefrontal cortex tracked estimation errors when those called for positive update, both in individuals who scored high and low on trait optimism. However, highly optimistic individuals exhibited reduced tracking of estimation errors that called for negative update in right inferior prefrontal gyrus. These findings indicate that optimism is tied to a selective update failure and diminished neural coding of undesirable information regarding the future.
authors: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, UK. t.sharot@ucl.ac.uk
authors: Tali
authors: T
authors: Sharot
authors: Christoph W
authors: CW
authors: Korn
authors: Raymond J
authors: RJ
authors: Dolan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001290:Attitude; D001921:Brain / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003717:Denial, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D015588:Observer Variation; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D011936:Reality Testing; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen