Newswise — Odds are people think the glass is half empty when it is overflowing and half full when it is about to run dry, according to a new University of Florida study on attitudes about risk. The research about perceptions of optimism and pessimism shows people brace for the worst when risk is low and are unduly confident about avoiding bad things, even when it's likely such events will happen.
"Travelers who mistakenly believe that they are likely to crash in a plane may take to the far more dangerous highways," said Kate Dockery, a UF graduate student in psychology who conducted the research for her master's thesis. "People don't brace sensibly. They're pessimistic about events that are unlikely to occur and optimistic about avoiding near certainties.
"This research has implications for risk-taking and self-protective behavior," she said. "If people make decisions based on their perceptions of risk and it seems that they do, misperceptions of risk are particularly interesting and important."
Although the chances of someone being attacked by the snipers that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in 2002 were less than one in 30,000, for example, many people were so paralyzed with fear they kept their children out of school and never left their homes, Dockery said. Yet in the case of divorce, which has a much higher risk of 50 percent, few couples who are about to marry think they'll end up splitting, she said.
"Young couples who are in love and about to marry who ignore the high divorce rate thinking it won't happen to them may make serious mistakes in the choices and preparations they make."
Dockery conducted her study among 180 UF college students who greatly overestimated their chances of getting an unexpected bill. The students, who were enrolled in three introductory psychology classes, were told the registrar's office had discovered students were under billed by $178 for a one-time technology fee. The error required they pay the fee back within a month or their academic records would be flagged. The scenario was fictional but the students were unaware. They completed questionnaires about their reactions, with half given surveys randomly assigning them a high likelihood " an 80 percent chance " or a low likelihood " a 20 percent possibility " of getting the bill.
The survey also asked the students five questions about their financial circumstances and these results were averaged. The researchers found that students for whom money was a big concern and had the most to lose were more likely to brace for the worst than students who indicated they were better off financially, Dockery said. But both groups, regardless of need, underestimated their chances in the more likely scenario and overestimated them in the less likely one, she said.
In the hypothetical case where the odds of getting the bill were only 20 percent, financially needy students estimated their chances at 50 percent, while their less cash-strapped classmates assessed the likelihood at 34 percent. In the 80 percent scenario, poorer students placed their odds at 63 percent. Even students for whom money was not such a problem estimated the risk at 51 percent, she said. No gender differences were found. Being unduly pessimistic in some situations seems to gird people against being caught unaware, Dockery said. When so much is at stake, as in the case of the Washington, D.C., snipers, bracing for the worst kept people on their guard, she said.
"People tend to feel disappointed when things come out worse than expected, so they brace to emotionally prepare themselves," she said. "Students may tell themselves they failed a test so that they won't be disappointed by a grade of C, just as a patient may imagine the worst possible outcome of a medical test so the diagnosis doesn't seem so bad."
Perhaps people are unreasonably hopeful in common, day-to-day situations out of a need to prepare for rare catastrophic events, she said.
In addition to the implications for risk-taking behavior, the results raise questions about how to prepare people for possible events, Dockery said. For instance, she said, should doctors give patients percentages for their chances of recovery when giving a prognosis?
"Knowing that people are going to do all sorts of mental gymnastics to distort the risk, my gut reaction is maybe that is not a good idea, at least not without giving a good amount of context and helping the patient really understand what those numbers mean," she said. "As we've seen in our study, people really have a poor conception of risk."
Paul Windschitl, a psychology professor at the University of Iowa, said it would be "problematic" for a doctor who communicates risk estimates to assume that people will accept it as stated.
"The Dockery findings are consistent with the notion that people tend to tailor their interpretations of a risk estimate to fit with their own personal circumstances," he said. "Often this personal tailoring makes perfect sense, but there are also times in which people's interpretations are influenced by factors that aren't relevant to their actual risk."
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