With so many people displaying optimism bias, it almost certainly has some survival value. It stands to reason that there would be, after all. The good news is that there are many benefits to the optimism bias. You may lose money, your home, your possessions, your health, and even your relationships just by failing to acknowledge and address the reality of the situation. This can put you in a dangerous or distressing situation without the means to extract yourself from it. If you tend to believe the best will happen and the worst never will, you're less likely to prepare for difficulties. They may take unnecessary physical risks because they just don't consider the possible consequences. People with a high level of optimism bias may be financially irresponsible. This can be a positive thing in some situations, but in others, it often leads people to do harmful things. People with a strong optimism bias are more willing to take chances. For one thing, if you always believe the best is likely to happen and the worst is unlikely, you may behave recklessly and without regard to your safety. Optimism bias isn't always a bad thing, but it can cause problems for you. You aren't getting the message that a negative event is likely. The right inferior frontal gyrus reduces its coding of such negative information. This failure to code negative information happens in the frontal lobe regions. Thus, they tend to think pessimistically. Since depression usually comes with a decrease in dopamine function, it makes sense that people with depression wouldn't have this advantage in increasing their optimism bias. ![]() The dopamine seemed to increase their optimism bias by affecting their ability to update what they'd learned. This was true even after they got the statistics showing they were more likely than they'd predicted to experience those negative events. Those who were given L-Dopa tended to retain their optimism. Finally, they were asked to estimate their probability of experiencing the negative events. Afterward, they were given statistics on how likely these events are. People were given a list of negative events and asked to rate how likely they were to happen to them. Researchers tried administering dopamine in the form of L-Dopa to see if it affected their level of optimism bias.
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