The Optimism Bias by Tali Sharot: extract

Our brains can be programmed to look at the bright side, says neuroscientist Tali Sharot in this excerpt from his new book

We like to think of ourselves as rational beings. We see behind us, the balance of probabilities, an umbrella. However, both the neurosciences and social sciences suggest that they are more optimistic than realistic. On average, we hope that things go better than we find ourselves. People underestimate their chances of divorce, losing your job or being diagnosed with cancer, hope that their children are gifted, imagine achieving more than their peers, and likely to overestimate their lives (sometimes 20 years or more)

The belief that the future will be much better than the past and present are known as optimism bias. It is in every state race, region and socioeconomic backgrounds. The school plays when I-Grow-Up are optimistic endemic, but also adults. A 2005 study found that adults over 60 have the same chance to see the glass half full as young adults

would be expected to erode the optimism in the wake of news about violent conflicts, high unemployment, tornadoes and floods and all the threats and failures that shape human life. Together we can grow pessimistic - about the direction of our country or the ability of our leaders to improve education and reduce crime. But optimism private about our personal future is still incredibly strong. A 2007 survey found that while 70% believed that families were generally poorer than in the days of their parents, 76% of respondents were optimistic about the future of his own family.

overly positive assumptions can lead to disastrous miscalculations - we make it less likely that health checks, sunscreen or open a savings account, and more likely to bet the farm on a bad investment. However, the bias also protects and inspires us, moves us forward instead of the nearest high ledge. Without optimism, our ancestors may never ventured far from their tribes and we can all be inhabitants of the cave, always crowded and dreams of light and heat.

To move forward, we must be able to imagine alternative realities - the best - and we believe we can achieve. That faith helps us to motivate us to achieve our goals. Optimists tend to work longer hours and tend to earn more. Economists at Duke University found that optimistic, even greater savings. And although it is less likely to divorce, are more likely to remarry -. An act which is, as Samuel Johnson wrote, the triumph of hope over experience

Although this better future is often an illusion, optimism has obvious advantages in this. Hope keeps our minds at ease, reduces stress and improves physical health. Researchers studying heart disease, patients find that optimists are more likely than non-optimistic patients to take vitamins, eat a low fat diet and exercise, reducing the overall risk of coronary. A study of cancer patients revealed that patients were more pessimistic 60 years likely to die within eight months not pessimistic, patients with initial health status and the same age.

In fact, a growing number of scientific evidence points to the conclusion that optimism can be programmed by the evolution of the human brain. The science of optimism, once scorned as a province intellectually suspect PEP rallies and smiling faces, opens a new window on the functioning of human consciousness. This shows could stimulate a revolution in psychology, as the country faces increasing evidence that our brains are not sealed in the past. They are constantly shaped by the future.

Wiring

to expect?

say that I would have liked my work on optimism stems from an interest in the positive side of human nature. The reality is that I found a brain injury innate optimism. After spending 9 / 11, in the city of New York, I began to study the collective memory of the terrorist attacks. I was intrigued by the fact that people feel that their memories were as accurate as a video, while often were full of errors. A survey conducted nationwide showed that 11 months after the attacks, the memories of individuals about their experiences of that day are consistent with the initial accounts (due in September 2011) that 63% of the time. They were also poor in remembering details of the event, such as the names of the airlines. Where these errors come from memory?

Scientists who study memory

proposed meet fascinating memories are susceptible to errors, partly because the neural system responsible for remembering our past, episodes could not have evolved from memory only. However, the main function of system memory may be made to imagine the future - let us prepare for what is yet to come. The system is not designed to perfectly reproduce past events, the researchers said. It is designed to build future scenarios for the flexibility in our minds. As a result, the memory also ends up being a rebuilding process, and sometimes the details are deleted and inserted another.

To test this, I decided to record brain activity of volunteers as they imagine future events - not on the scale of the events of 9 / 11, but events in their lives everyday - and compare these results with the model I noticed that the same individuals, recalled past events. But something unexpected happened. Once people began to imagine the future, even the most ordinary events of life seem to take a dramatic turn for the better. Mundane scenes lit with data optimism, as if by a Hollywood script brilliant doctor. You might think that the hairdresser imagine the future would be boring. Not at all. This is what one of my participants to photography: "I was getting my hair cut to donate to Locks of Love [a charity that fashion wigs for young cancer patients] that m ' had taken years to develop, and my friends were there. to help celebrate. We went to my favorite hair house in Brooklyn and then went to eat at our favorite restaurant. "

asked other participants to imagine a plane trip. "I thought off - my favorite - and take a nap after eight hours in the middle and finally landing in Krakow and applaud the pilot for the provision of safe travel," she said. No bitumen delays, no babies crying. The world, only one or two years in the future, is a wonderful place to live,

If all our participants stressed positive thinking when it comes to what was in store for them personally, what does this tell us about how our brains are wired? It is the human tendency to be optimistic due to the architecture of our brains?

Time Machine

Man

to think positively about our prospects, we must first be able to imagine in the future. Optimism begins with what may be the most extraordinary human talent, time travel, the ability to move forward and backward in time and space in mind. While most of us take for granted that ability, our ability to imagine a time and place is essential to our survival.

is easy to see why time travel has been naturally selected for the course of cognitive development. This allows us to plan ahead, to save food and resources for times of shortage and support the hard work in preparation for a future reward. It also allows us to predict how our current behaviors can affect future generations. If we were not able to imagine the world in a hundred years or more, be affected by global warming? Try to live a healthy life? Can you have children?

Any time travel, has obvious advantages for survival, humans are aware of pension arrived at a huge price - the understanding that somewhere in the future, death awaits. Ajit Varki, a biologist at the University of California, San Diego, said the awareness of mortality alone, the evolution has led to an impasse. Despair would interfere with our job every day, so that the activities necessary for survival to a stop. The only way to travel in the spirit of the times could have arisen conscious course of evolution is so revealed, with an irrational optimism. The knowledge of death had to go from side to side with the ability to persist in a bright future.

The ability to predict the future is based in part on the hippocampus, a brain structure crucial for memory. Patients with hippocampal sclerosis can not remember the past, but are unable to construct detailed images of future scenarios. They seem to be trapped in time. The rest of us are constantly moving back and forth in time, could think of a conversation we had with our spouse, then and immediately after dinner plans for tonight

But the brain does not travel through time at random. They tend to engage in certain types of thoughts. Consider how our children are in life, how can we do the work, pay the house on the hill and find the perfect love. We envision our team winning the deciding game, expect a great night on the town or a good image streak in blackjack table. We also worry about the loss of loved ones, if in our work or to die in a terrible plane crash - but research shows that most of us spend less time mulling over the negative results of what we do on the positive. When we contemplate the loss and pain, they tend to focus on how these can be avoided.

The results of a study I conducted a few years ago with outstanding neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps, suggest that the direction of our thoughts on the future towards the positive results from our cortex communication with the frontal subcortical regions Deep in our brain. The frontal cortex, a large area behind the front, is the latest evolution of the brain. It is larger in humans than in other primates, and is essential for many functions such as human language complex and goal setting. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recorded the brain activity of volunteers scanner while imagining specific events that could happen to them in the future. Some of these events were asked to imagine desirable (or a big date to win a large sum of money), and some reactions (loss of a portfolio, ending a relationship). The volunteers reported that their images sought after events were richer and more vivid than those of adverse events.

This coincided with the increase in activity was observed in two critical areas of the brain: the amygdala, a small structure deep in the brain that is essential for the processing of emotion and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (RACC), an area of ??the frontal cortex, which modulates emotion and motivation. The RACC is a driver of traffic, improving the flow of positive emotions and associations. The more optimistic a person has been more activity in these regions was positive, while imagining future events (relative to negative) and the stronger connectivity between the two structures.

The results were particularly fascinating precisely because these regions - the amygdala and the RACC - show abnormal activity in depressed people. While healthy people expect the future a little better than that eventually, people with depression tend to be part pessimistic: it is expected that things are worse than they end up being. People with mild depression are relatively accurate in predicting future events. They see the world as it is. In other words, in the absence of a neural mechanism that generates an unrealistic optimism, it is possible that all human beings would be slightly depressed.

• optimism can change reality?

The problem with pessimistic expectations, such as clinical depression is that they have the power to change the future, negative expectations in a negative way. How to change the expectations reality?

To answer this question by my colleague, cognitive neuroscience Sara Bengtsson, designed an experiment to manipulate positive and negative expectations of students while their brains were scanned and tested their performance on cognitive tasks. To encourage expectations of success, the students ready with words like smart, intelligent and clever, before being invited to perform a test. To encourage expectations of failure, we have prepared with words like stupid and ignorant. Students perform better after being prepared with a message as well.

examining the brain imaging data, Bengtsson found that the brains of students responded differently to mistakes they made in terms of whether they were prepared with the word intelligent or word stupid. When the error followed by positive words, there is increased activity in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex (a region that is involved in self-reflection and meditation). However, when participants were ready with the word stupid, there was no increase in activity after a wrong answer. It seems that, having been prepared using the word stupid, that the brain expects to hurt and showed no sign of surprise or conflict when you made a mistake.

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