Throughout the paper we reflect on a number of methodological challenges in the empirical study of optimism.ġ. Unrealistic optimism and other positive illusions In Section 5 we discuss two ways of understanding fixity of beliefs, i.e., whether beliefs are responsive to evidence and whether they are sensitive to life circumstances. Are they typically false? Are they epistemically irrational? The answers to these questions will be informed by an analysis of the extent to which optimistically biased beliefs and predictions are fixed. In Sections 3, 4, we consider their epistemic status. Are they tendencies to adopt and maintain positive beliefs and to make predictions that are optimistically biased, or to express desires and hopes about the self and the future? We suggest that we should understand optimistically biased cognitive states as beliefs and predictions. In Section 2, we ask how we should think about positive illusions. In Section 1, we distinguish between unrealistic optimism and other positive illusions and explain different ways of operationalizing unrealistic optimism.
Whether they do indeed have positive effects is beyond the scope of this paper. If such cognitive states can be said to be false or epistemically irrational beliefs, then they are candidates for being false or epistemically irrational beliefs that are useful. In order to assess such claims, we need to explain what unrealistic optimism is, whether the cognitive states that are unrealistically optimistic are belief states, and to what extent they are false. It is sometimes claimed that positive illusions generally, and unrealistic optimism specifically, are systematic tendencies to form beliefs that are biased, and often false, but have significant benefits ( Taylor and Brown, 1988, Taylor and Brown, 1994), because they increase wellbeing, contribute to mental and physical health, and support productivity and motivation (cf.
Beliefs exhibit epistemic irrationality to the extent that they are badly supported by the evidence available to the agent, or are maintained despite counter-evidence which is available to the agent. There is an ongoing debate in philosophy and psychology as to whether false beliefs are epistemically irrational and whether they can have pragmatic benefits, even if they are epistemically irrational ( Bortolotti and Sullivan-Bissett, 2015, Craigie and Bortolotti, 2014, Haselton and Nettle, 2006). In this paper we are interested in the nature of unrealistic optimism and other positive illusions as discussed in the psychological literature.
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