“How are you doing” “Well”, and suppressing criticism, are both examples of optimism bias on a social scale. The social norms appear to be optimized for causing more positivity than negativity to be expressed. Thus, the socially accepted beliefs have optimism bias.
How are “social norms … optimized for causing more positivity than negativity to be expressed” an example of “someone … believ[ing] that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event”? What is the relationship of the one to the other, even?
As far as the happiness thing, this is really quite speculative and far from obvious, and while I don’t have much desire to argue about the functional role of happiness, etc., I would suggest that taking it to be an example of optimism bias (or indicative of a preference for having optimism bias, etc.) is ill-advised.
It’s hard to disentangle the belief that things are currently going well from the belief that things will go well in the future, as present circumstances cause future circumstances. In general, a bias towards thinking things are going well right now, will cause a bias towards thinking things are going to go well in the future.
If someone is building a ship, and someone criticizes the ship for being unsafe, but this criticism is suppressed, that would result in optimism bias at a social scale, since it leads people to falsely believe the ship is safer than it actually is.
If I’m actually worried about getting fired, but answer “well” to “how are you doing”, then that would result in optimism bias on a social scale, since the socially accepted belief is falsely implying I’m not worried and my job is stable.
If someone is building a ship, and someone criticizes the ship for being unsafe, but this criticism is suppressed, that would result in optimism bias at a social scale, since it leads people to falsely believe the ship is safer than it actually is.
This seems to assume that absent suppression of criticism, people’s perceptions would be accurate.
My view is that people make better judgments with more information, generally (but not literally always), but not that they always make accurate judgments when they have more information. Suppressing criticism but not praise, in particular, is a move to intentionally miscalibrate/deceive the audience.
How are “social norms … optimized for causing more positivity than negativity to be expressed” an example of “someone … believ[ing] that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event”? What is the relationship of the one to the other, even?
As far as the happiness thing, this is really quite speculative and far from obvious, and while I don’t have much desire to argue about the functional role of happiness, etc., I would suggest that taking it to be an example of optimism bias (or indicative of a preference for having optimism bias, etc.) is ill-advised.
It’s hard to disentangle the belief that things are currently going well from the belief that things will go well in the future, as present circumstances cause future circumstances. In general, a bias towards thinking things are going well right now, will cause a bias towards thinking things are going to go well in the future.
If someone is building a ship, and someone criticizes the ship for being unsafe, but this criticism is suppressed, that would result in optimism bias at a social scale, since it leads people to falsely believe the ship is safer than it actually is.
If I’m actually worried about getting fired, but answer “well” to “how are you doing”, then that would result in optimism bias on a social scale, since the socially accepted belief is falsely implying I’m not worried and my job is stable.
This seems to assume that absent suppression of criticism, people’s perceptions would be accurate.
My view is that people make better judgments with more information, generally (but not literally always), but not that they always make accurate judgments when they have more information. Suppressing criticism but not praise, in particular, is a move to intentionally miscalibrate/deceive the audience.