The story is told of an incurably upbeat man who jumped off the Empire State Building. As he hurtled down past the 20th floor, he was heard to shout, “So far, so good!” According to neuroscientist Tali Sharot, we’re all like that. Sharot describes our strong proclivity to don rose-colored glasses in her book The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain. I haven’t seen the book yet, but did read an excerpt in the June 6, 2011 edition of Time.
According to Sharot, the optimism bias is the belief that the future will be much better than the past and present. As 
her subtitle implies, we humans incline toward optimism even when the evidence for our positive expectations is weak. She reports the results of numerous brain imaging studies showing that the brain areas most associated with having positive thoughts about the future are the amygdala and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, but I was less interested in the neural basis for optimism than the reasons she gives for its pervasiveness. Sharot notes that optimism is useful; being optimistic provides a variety of benefits. Optimistic heart patients are more likely to take vitamins, eat a proper diet, and exercise than are their pessimistic counterparts. Optimistic cancer patients have longer life spans. Depression is associated with an absence of the optimism bias. Sharot isn’t just a cheerleader for optimism, though, noting that in some circumstances it is maladaptive. In this context, I like British psychologist Havelock Ellis’s quip: “The place where optimism flourishes most is the lunatic asylum.”
Sharot gives an origin myth for optimism. She suggests that optimism developed in conjunction with our ability to imagine ourselves in the future, that is, to engage in “mental time travel.” The capacity to picture the future was a mental advance that probably aided our survival tremendously. However, with it came the awareness that we would die one day. Following biologist Ajit Varki, Sharot claims that awareness of our impending death would have rendered us unable to function had it not emerged alongside irrational optimism. Sharot provides no argument to support this theory (though of course I’m drawing only on her article, not the book), and it’s not too hard to poke holes in it. For example, our optimism only pertains to our expectations for such things as getting a good job and a loving spouse; it is not an expectation that we’ll cheat death. So if awareness of mortality would immobilize those of our ancestors who didn’t have an optimistic bias, why wouldn’t it have done the same for ancestors who think they’ll have a few successful hunts or harvests before going the way of all flesh? If awareness of death leads to despair, it should do so for everyone, not just pessimists. Also, since our ancestors were for the most part members of collectivist societies for whom the survival of the group was more important than individual survival, shouldn’t their optimism have focused more on prospects for the group than on their individual well-being? As Sharot notes, we more easily become pessimistic about the future of our group than about our personal futures. That seems contrary to what would be expected from the evolutionary theory she advocates.
I don’t think of myself as much of an optimist, at least in the sense of having a general expectation that the future will be better than the past. In many ways, I’m convinced it won’t be. My aching knees will only ache more, and that little bit of difficulty I now have with glare when driving at night will get worse. I’ll have more trouble remembering people’s names, and words won’t come to mind as easily (I had the hardest time this week remembering the word “embalm” after someone mentioned dead people being injected with formaldehyde). My income will be falling in a few years, and I expect finances to be tighter. Despite such pessimistic expectations, I see myself as a person with hope.
Sharot seems to use optimism and hope synonymously, but I think there is a meaningful but subtle difference between the two. I did a web search on “hope vs. optimism” that helped me think about how they differ. This post is already long, though, so I’ll write later about what I found.
