Unrealistic Optimism: East and West?

Abstract

Following Weinstein’s (1980) pioneering work many studies established that people have an optimistic bias concerning future life events. At first, the bulk of research was conducted using populations in North America and Northern Europe, the optimistic bias was thought of as universal, and little attention was paid to cultural context. However, construing unrealistic optimism as a form of self-enhancement, some researchers noted that it was far less common in East Asian cultures. The current study extends enquiry to a different non-Western culture. Two hundred and eighty seven middle aged and middle income participants (200 in India, 87 in England) rated 11 positive and 11 negative events in terms of the chances of each event occurring in “their own life,” and the chances of each event occurring in the lives of “people like them.” Comparative optimism was shown for bad events, with Indian participants showing higher levels of optimism than English participants. The position regarding comparative optimism for good events was more complex. In India those of higher socioeconomic status (SES) were optimistic, while those of lower SES were on average pessimistic. Overall, English participants showed neither optimism nor pessimism for good events. The results, whose clinical relevance is discussed, suggest that the expression of unrealistic optimism is shaped by an interplay of culture and socioeconomic circumstance.

The Mismatch Negativity: An Indicator of Perception of Regularities in Music

“…For instance, François et al (2012) have demonstrated that 8–10-year-old children who had been randomly assigned to (12 months) a music lesson group showed a larger increase in MMN amplitude than the control group children who were assigned to a painting lesson [ 100 ]. Consistently, Putkinen and Saarikivi (2013) have also revealed that the MMN elicited by minor chord deviants in a sequence of major chord standards showed more amplitude increase in music-trained children (7–13 years old) than in children without music training [ 101 ].…”

“…Most of normal people are nonmusicians but amateurs or just influenced by musical contexts in an implicit way. For instance, various computer and console games attract children into “musical play,” which could be considered as informal environments for music learning [ 101 ]. Then, an important question is that do these informal musical activities affect development of auditory discrimination and attention in preschool-aged children?…”

“…One assumption is that these idiosyncrasies of Western tonal music are internalized in nonmusicians via everyday musical experiences. Recently, Putkinen and Saarikivi (2013) have investigated an issue of whether amount of informal musical activities is related to electrophysiological correlates of auditory deviation detection in 2-3-year-old children [ 101 ]. They used a multifeature MMN paradigm (Näätänen et al, 2004) to assess several auditory ERP responses and revealed that the MMN reflects different stages of auditory processing particularly in childhood.…”

Unrealistic Optimism Among a Sample of University Students in Egypt and Saudi Arabia (Cross-cultural Study)

“…However, the indirect method (separate self-and peer judgments) produced different patterns across cultures because culturally specific motivational biases emerged using this method; specifically, the U.S. sample was more unrealistically optimistic than the Japanese sample. Joshi & Carter (2013 ) in their study extends enquiry to a different non-Western culture. Two hundred and eighty seven middle aged and middle income participants (200 in India, 87 in England) rated 11 positive and 11…”

We Are Safe but You Are Not: Exploring Comparative Optimism and Cyber Bullying

“…However, the direction of these findings is mixed; some studies have reported that females are less optimistic than males (Puskar et al 2010) whereas other studies have reported no gender differences (Joshi and Carter 2013). Therefore, we examined gender differences in reports of comparative optimism, although no direct predictions were made because of the lack of a consistent pattern in the previous research.…”