The optimistic brain

Take a moment to consider the following questions. In uncertain times, do you usually expect the best? Do you expect more good things to happen to you than bad? Do you think that if something can go wrong for you, it will? Do you hardly ever expect things to go your way? People who respond “yes” to the first two questions and “no” to the latter two are characterized as optimists¹. Most of us tend to be optimistic, which is a good thing because optimism is associated with many benefits to both physical and mental health; optimists tend to be well-adjusted psychologically and are equipped to handle stress well². But we may be optimistic to a fault, in the sense that we maintain unrealistically positive expectations of our futures. For example, compared to the population in general, people think that they are more likely to own their own homes and live a long life and also think that they are less likely to have a drinking problem or a heart attack³. Although researchers have explored cognitive and social factors that contribute to optimistic bias and related mistakes that people make when predicting the future⁴, next to nothing is known about the underlying brain processes. Sharot et al.⁵ now report a neuroimaging study that sheds light on how the brain generates an optimistic bias.

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