The aim of this experiment is to examine whether unrealistic optimism is present in the context of twenty-two risk factors including health, employment and personal safety. This study is a partial replication of Weinstein’s (1980) “Unrealistic Optimism About Future Life Events” experiment; examining student’s estimation of experiencing future negative events in comparison to their peers. The Weinstein (1980) study found that for negative events the more undesirable the event, the stronger the optimistic bias, i.e. as the effect gets stronger so does a persons distortion of reality. In addition to this, the results support the idea that past personal experiences decrease a persons unrealistic optimism as it is easier to imagine situations causing the event. Being a replication of Weinstein’s (1980) work it is predicted that the experimental results should support this and thus the hypothesis for this study is that the participants will show an unrealistic optimism in their view that their peers are more likely to experience the future negative events compared to themselves, in relation to the twenty-two risk factors.
Method
Design
A ‘within group’ design, questionnaire survey. The independent variables were the two conditions of the questionnaire, ‘Self’ and ‘Peers’ that the participant filled in. The dependent variable was the scaled responses.
Participants
A total of seventy-two first year psychology students from the University of Bath took part in the survey. The participants were aged between 17 and 35; with a mean age of 19.11 years, and 26.4% were male, and 73.6% female. Additionally 35 people were in the ‘Self then Peers’ condition and 37 in ‘Peers then Self’.
Materials
A two-page self-completion, social belief questionnaire (Harris, 2005) (see Figure 1 in appendix) was used for this study. The questionnaire began by asking participents for the demographic details required for this experiment such as their age and sex. The main body of the questionnaire was two identical sets of a list of 22 risk factors, that participants predicted the likelihood of these happening to themselves and their peers, with answers going onto a 11-point Likert scale. The scale ranged from 0 being impossible to 10 being extremely likely. The risk factors were on topics such as health and employment.
Procedure
The questionnaires were handed out to all the students who attended the psychology lecture that day (advanced warning was given to people that an experiment was going to be carried out). Participants were instructed how to proceed by a short written introduction at the top of the questionnaire. The participants were all reminded that taking part was voluntary, consent could be withdrawn at any time, and that all responses were anonymous. It was also made clear to the participants that the questionnaire was to be completed individually and in silence. Participants completed the questionnaire for themselves and also for how they perceived an average University of Bath student of the same age and gender to have completed the questionnaire. The questionnaires were then collected in.
To minimise any order effects the order of questions were counter balanced. After this a full debriefing took place where any participants queries or concerns were answered.
Results
The summary of the results for this experiment are found in Table 1, which shows the average response to each test condition, and its maximum and minimum response value. Table 1 shows that as predicted participants thought that negative events were more likely to occur to their peers than to themselves and thus indicating they are unrealistically optimistic. Twenty of the twenty-two average responses to the questions showed this trend. The only exceptions being ‘doing badly at a job interview’ and ‘dying before the age of sixty’ where the responses were 6.24 and 4.64 respectively for the ‘Self’ condition, compared with 6.01 and 4.46 for the ‘Peer’ condition. However these discrepancies are not significant enough to disprove the hypothesis that people have an optimistic bias about future life events. A dependent T-test revealed that there was a significant difference between the two averages, 4.29 and 4.93 for ‘Self’ and ‘Peers’ respectively and so the hypothesis was supported.
Discussion
Prior to implementing this research it was hypothesised that people are unrealistically optimistic about future negative life events, in that these events are relatively unlikely to happen to them. The results of this experiment support the hypothesis that people do have an optimistic bias, demonstrated by the mean values of responses to the questionnaire. For ‘Self’ it was 4.29 but for ‘Peer’ it was 4.93, this is shown in Table1. Moreover the individual responses to the risk factors also followed this trend, with twenty out of the twenty-two risk factors answered in the predicted way. Additionally when broken down into the two groups (‘Self then Peers’ and ‘Peers then Self’) the results of the experiment still support the hypothesis. The ‘Self then Peers’ group had a mean result of 4.38 for ‘Self’ and 4.91 for ‘Peer’. The ‘Peers then Self’ group had a mean result of 4.19 for ‘Self’ and 4.96 for ‘Peers’. However the ‘Self then Peers’ group had 7 responses to the risk factors which did not follow the expected trend, compared to 0 in the ‘Peers then Self’ group. Despite the fact that overall the difference was not significant in this context, further study could help reveal how order effects influence testing of unrealistic optimism.
The findings of this study not only support the hypothesis that participants will show an unrealistic optimism that their peers are more likely to experience the negative events in the future than themselves, but also the earlier findings of Weinstein (1980). As the experimental results showed the participants believe their chances of experiencing negative events in the future are less than that of their peers. Although the bias varied as expected for each risk factor the overall hypothesis was supported. However it would be interesting to use these results to examine the extent of optimistic bias for events that differ in undesirability. Moreover this experiment could also look into the illusion of control effect McKenna (1993) studied. The results of this study could be looked at in terms of controllability. For example the perceived controllable event of developing a drinking problem was rated by participants at 3.00 for ‘Self’, but the uncontrollable event of having their home burgled was 4.82; a significant difference.
This study was effective in many ways, the twenty-two risk factors covered many topics and the 11-point Likert scale gave the participants enough range to place their views concisely. However if there was an opportunity to replicate this study, some ways to improve it would be to increase the number of participants, and widen the demographic from where the participants came from (for example wider age range, not all university students, or a wider spectrum of nationalities and cultures), to make this study more applicable to the wider world. Moreover further research could look deeper into the links between unrealistic optimism and self-protective behaviour, in what context this occurs, and how it can be overcome to help protect people. In addition this research could use a wider range of risk factors, and more importantly test positive future life events to attempt to support Weinstein’s (1980) research findings that people will overestimate the likelihood these events will happen to them compared to their peers. Unrealistic optimism research could also be extended into comparisons of the extent of the effects on different demographics, possibly males against females or older against younger people.
In conclusion the participants in this study showed unrealistic optimism in relation to the twenty-two risk factors scenarios posed. These results supported the hypothesis, but don’t consider other factors including control. The implications of this research are that people do have an optimistic bias about future negative events, and this is especially important in today’s culture, where governments and health campaigners are using mass media to warn people of the dangers of alcohol, smoking and unprotected sex and so they must use techniques to overcome this.
References
Weinstein, N.D., 1980. Unrealistic Optimism About Future Life Events. Journal Personality and Social Psychology, 39, pp806-820.
Muren, A., 2004, Unrealistic Optimism About Extraneous Events [online]. Availiable from: http://www.ne.su.se/paper/wp04_01.pdf
McKenna, F.P., 1993. It Won’t Happen To Me: Unrealistic Optimism Or Illusion Of Control? British Journal Of Psychology, 84, p39.
Weinstein, N.D., Marcus, S.E., Moser, R.P., 2005. Smokers’ Unrealistic Optimism About Their Risk. Tobacco Control, 14, pp 55-59.
Table 1
Summary Of Responses To The Questionnaire
