optimism, unrealistic

n. A person's underestimation of the likelihood that he or she will experience a negative event, such as a heart attack, in the future or overestimation of the likelihood that he or she will experience a positive event, such as winning the lottery, in the future. Most often, unrealistic optimism has been demonstrated by asking a representative sample of people to compare themselves to the average person in the population from which they are selected. For example, male college students may be asked to compare their own risk of failing to graduate to the risk of the average male student at the same educational institution. The college students could be asked to make a “direct comparison,” for example, on a scale that ranges from “much below average” to “much above average,” or they could be asked to make separate estimates for their own risk and the risk of the average student (“indirect comparison”). If the mean comparative risk judgment of the sample is significantly different from “average” (direct method), or if the means of the individuals' personal estimates are significantly different from the mean estimate they make for the “average student” (indirect method), this is evidence of a systematic bias in the risk judgments of the sample as a whole. One cannot say, however, that a particular individual is unrealistic, in the absence of detailed information about both the factors that determine an individual's risk and the person's standing on these factors. Thus, a person who gives an optimistic judgment (“My risk is below average”) is not necessarily being unrealistic. – NW