Media intervention program for reducing unrealistic optimism bias: The link between unrealistic optimism, well‐being, and health

Abstract

Unrealistic optimism is the tendency to perceive oneself as safer than others in situations that equally threaten everybody. By reducing fear, this bias boosts one's well‐being; however, it is also a deterrent to one's health. Three experiments were run in a mixed‐design on 1831 participants to eliminate unrealistic optimism (measured by two items—probability of COVID‐19 infection for oneself and for others; within‐subjects) toward the probability of COVID‐19 infection via articles/videos. A between‐subject factor was created by manipulation. Ostensibly, daily newspaper articles describing other people diligently following medical recommendations (experiment 1) and videos showing people who did not follow these recommendations (experiment 2) reduced unrealistic optimism. The third experiment, which included both articles and videos, replicated these results. These results can be applied to strategies for written and video communications that can be used by governments and public health agencies as best practices concerning not only COVID‐19 but also any subsequent public health threat while promoting proactive, optimal, and healthy functioning of the individual.

Willingness to Receive COVID-19 Booster Vaccine: Associations between Green-Pass, Social Media Information, Anti-Vax Beliefs, and Emotional Balance

“…An article published by Karafillakis and colleagues [ 50 ] summarizes what has been discussed so far among optimism, infodemic, education, cognitive abilities, and social networks. Researchers have conducted a study in order to eliminate unrealistic optimism, demonstrating it through three experiments.…”

Exposing People to Others Not Following Recommendations Reduces Unrealistic Optimism. An Experiment During a Pandemic

“…On the one hand, mimicry (a less direct egocentric mechanism) leads to an increase in Unrealistic Optimism (Kulesza et al, in press). On the other hand, direct exposure to others leads to mixed results: indirect exposure (via media news) leads to Unrealistic Optimism reduction (as expected by the egocentrism reduction hypothesis) but more direct exposure (films, TV news media) leads to an increase in this bias (Dolinski et al, 2022). Taken together we hypothesize that exposing participants to others will change the Unrealistic Optimism bias.…”

“…Unrealistic Optimism is a dangerous form of bias leading to dangerous consequences for the person holding this delusional way of perceiving the world, such as a greater risk of developing cancer (Dillard et al, 2006;McCaul et al, 1996), and alcohol addiction (Dillard et al, 2009). From this perspective, recent papers show another clear danger of this bias: all around the world, study participants report greater chances for COVID-19 infection for peers rather than to themselves (Dolinski et al, 2021;Dolinski et al, 2022;Druică et al, 2020;Izydorczak et al, in press;Kulesza et al, in press;Kulesza et al, 2020;McColl et al, 2022). For this very reason the search for mechanisms to reduce this bias is highly important.…”

Impact of Family Functioning on Adolescent Materialism and Egocentrism in Mainland China: Positive Youth Development Attributes as a Mediator

“…Practically, the findings of the present investigation advocate that materialism and egocentrism of adolescents could be eliminated by specialized intervention programs in family functioning and positive youth development. In the information technology era, mass media have played a pivotal role in influencing materialism and egocentrism of adolescents (e.g., [ 81 , 85 ]). However, under the Confucian tradition in China, parents still exert great influence on the developmental outcomes of adolescents who strongly attach the value of filial piety (see [ 1 ]).…”