Since people expect harmful consequences to happen to them, they are motivated to present all possible behaviors preventing health/life-threatening events. From this point of view, unrealistic pessimism saves lives. One should note, however, that unrealistic optimism is one side of the coin, which can show its second side as we flip it: unrealistic pessimism pertains to the fact that people holding this view present precisely the opposite view: they estimate chances of adverse events happening to them as more probable in comparison to peers. Based on the above findings, unrealistic optimism simply harms one’s health. For example, smokers, holding this view, were unrealistically optimistic about lung cancer, and as a result did not quit smoking women were less likely to undergo mammographic screening students who were unrealistically optimistic about the risk of experiencing alcohol-related problems did in fact experience them more often. Īs mentioned above, unrealistic optimism affects people’s health-related decisions, and from this perspective, unrealistic optimism is not always beneficial. Unrealistic optimism reduces fear and anxiety, retains a sense of personal control, and helps to cope with threatening experiences. We are unrealistically optimistic about the future negative events, such as a car crash, divorce, addiction, and more importantly, health issues, will not happen to us but to our peers, and only positive events will happen to us. We hypothesized that that citizens would not follow regulations due to the unrealistic optimism, which is a cognitive bias where we are supposed to be less exposed to danger events in comparison to others. In this paper, we claim that citizens will not follow guidelines and recommendations, making it impossible to achieve both goals, and thus eventually fully eradicate COVID-19. The massive – in terms of financial and human resources – effort to fight against lethal COVID-19 is twofold: introducing to the market a vaccine to prevent new infections and/or effective drugs to cure those already infected. Conclusions: Medical education of COVID-19 severity might reduce unrealistic optimism, which may be the reason why pandemic restrictions are not being respected. In study 2, unrealistic optimism was not found among healthcare professionals, who we hypothesized due to the medical knowledge are not inclined to be unrealistically optimistic t(206) = 1.06 p = 0.290, d = 0.07.
Unrealistic optimism and susceptibility to trickery code#
Results: In study 1 across the 3 cultures (the first wave for unmatched data by the code of the specific participant F(1, 1608) = 419.2 p < 0.001, and for matched data F(1, 372) = 167.195 p < 0.001 ηp² = 0.31 ηp² = 0.21 the second wave for unmatched data F(1, 1423) = 359.61 p < 0.001 ηp² = 0.2, and for matched F(1, 372) = 166.84 p < 0.001 ηp² = 0.31), unrealistic optimism is present, and importantly it is constant in time. In study 2, the survey was conducted among 207 Polish healthcare workers of the frontline hospital. In the second wave, there were 1426 respondents.
In the first wave, 1611 participants took the survey. In study 1/objective 1, the survey was conducted twice (in a period of about 3 weeks) to assess the potential change (due to the anonymous codes delivered by the participants, we were able to make follow-ups between the same participants) in time in the 3 countries. Material and methods: In May and April of 2020, online surveys were administered among students in Iran, Kazakhstan, and Poland respectively to assess the unrealistic optimism/pessimism.
The goal of the research was not only to assess whether this effect exists and to find out whether such an effect is global but also to evaluate whether there are groups resistant to this effect (presenting a potential toolkit for reducing this effect). In this research, we assessed the hazardous side effect for global health policies stemming from this optimism: unrealistic optimism (being unrealistically optimistic about future negative events), which may be responsible for new infections and may prevent the eradication of COVID-19. Introduction: Optimism is boosted by leaders hoping for job creation, increased business spending, and a high consumption rate.
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