![](https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/08/06/21/52/guitar-2596726_960_720.jpg)

So recently, I gave a test for getting my driver's license(all the work related to that is why I haven't posted in the last few days). It's a very simple,multiple choice test, comprised of 15 questions. If you get 9 of them right, you pass. The RTO(the authority that issues licenses) publishes study material for the exam. So for those who just go through that list once, passing is very easy.I glanced over that list once, and passed easily.

What was surprising was the number of people I talked to at the RTO who hadn't looked at it. People thought that it was just simple, General Knowledge questions that "everybody knew". This despite the fact that a lot of them were talking about the number of people ahead of them that were failing.

Of course, a lot of these who didn't prepare at all people failed.

I thought about why this happened, and then I realised, **this was because of optimism bias.** I'd read about optimism bias before, but this was the first time I realised it happening in front of me.

### What is Optimism Bias?

Optimism Bias is the propensity of humans to underestimate the probability of bad things happening to them or, to overestimate the probability of bad things happening to everyone else. Optimism bias seems to be prevalent in everyone across the world, across cultures, nationalities, gender, income etc.

What's interesting is that people seem to be unrealistically optimistic about themselves even when they think that the people around them won't have a good future. In surveys where people thought that the future generation won't have it as good as they have, they still made an exception for their own children. They thought that their children still had a good future.It's the same thing with smokers. Those who believe that they won't have cancer in spite of smoking still think that the general smoking population will suffer from cancer.  

**We always believe that our families, our children, our investments, our businesses will do well, even when we think that the rest of the country or world is going down the drain.**

One of the few people who aren't susceptible to this bias is those who have depression. People with mild depression have actually been observed to be more rational than most normal people, who are overly optimistic. On the other hand, people with severe depression are overly pessimistic.

### So, is unrealistic optimism bad?

Of course it is, most people would say. In fact most people believe that the only way to get happiness out of life,is to expect less. The theory, is that if you expect less, you won't be disappointed when you fail. And when you succeed, you'll be surprised and happy.

But it's been found out, that this isn't really what happens. **Because your reaction to something depends on how you interpret it.**

So for example, if you have 2 students, one is an optimist, the other a pessimist.When the optimist gets good marks in an exam, he thinks that it's because of his effort. But when he gets bad marks, he thinks it's because that particular exam was uncharacteristically hard. He thinks that he will continue to get good marks in future exams.On the other hand, when the pessimist gets good marks, he thinks it's because this particular exam was uncharacteristically easy. That the trend of bad marks will come back in the future. **So the optimist doesn't get bogged down by short term failure. Similarly, the pessimist doesn't get confident because of initial success.**  

In this case, both of them are biased, because they have no idea of predicting how future exams are going to be like. But the optimist still is in the fight. He thinks that if he puts in the effort, he'll be able to get good marks again.

**Just because you expect less out of life, doesn't mean that you will never be disappointed - sometimes life kicks you in the balls really harder than you expected it to; and when that happens, you won't have the resilience to try again, because you never expected anything out of yourself.**

**Optimism doesn't magically make you successful,but it does give you the resiliency to not give up in the face of failure.**

**Of course, this doesn't mean you can depend upon optimism to bend objective reality, and it certainly doesn't save you time, or make you more effective at whatever it is that you want to do.** Those people who failed that driving exam are going to have to re-apply. They probably wasted 2 more months because they were overly optimistic.

So optimism is a safety net that saves us when the rest of the world has failed us. And this has been observed in the real world - optimistic people do better in academia, in sports, in business.
A lot of these people probably suffered from potentially career-ending failure at least once - just like a lot of other people do. But again, **it's not about what happens to you, it's how you react to the things that happen to you that matters.**. And these people tried again, because they were optimistic about their long-term career.

I think optimism, even the slightly unrealistic type, is good. Just don't expect it to magically make you successful.

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#### Sources

- Header Image from Pixabay

- [Youtube video that helped me learn more about optimism bias](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8rmi95pYL0)

- Awesome footer animation by @malos10

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