Prescribed Optimism: Is It Right to Be Wrong About the Future?

Personal predictions are often optimistically biased. This simple observation has troubling implications for psychologists, economists, and decision theorists concerned with rationality and the accuracy of self-knowledge (Armor & Taylor, 2002; Krizan & Windschitl, 2007; Sweeny, Carroll, & Shepperd, 2006). However, normative conclusions about the impropriety of optimistic bias rest on an untested assumption: that people desire to be accurate when making personal predictions. If people believe, rightly or wrongly, that unrealistic optimism has some value, then optimistic bias may be usefully understood as being consistent with people's values and beliefs.