Optimistic Bias

I am at a bit of a crossroads when it comes to cultures that I am a part of. I have a religious culture, an African culture, a Southern culture, and a European culture. I often joke about not really knowing where I am from since I am made up of DNA from 17 different regions. However, apart from that, I have an American culture. It’s the culture that I relate the most. It’s the one, that regardless of where I grew up, it will always stick with me.

America is one of the world’s greatest superpowers. Our country tends to involve itself in every struggle worldwide, whether it involves us or not. We have one of the most powerful militaries and we freely offer aid to other countries in need. We’re there to save the world from itself. Or so we think. With being everywhere the world needs us, it’s hard to think that anything bad would ever happen to us. A lot of that changed on September 11, 2001. Never before has a foreign entity attacked us before of this magnitude on the continental states.

The optimism we have in the United States from everything from safety, to relationships, to education, has caused me to have an “it won’t happen to us” attitude while growing up. I used to watch the news as a child and wonder what was wrong with the rest of the world. I remember the conflict in Tiananmen Square and was sure that would never happen here. When embassies were being blown up, I still figured it would never happen here. We had gone through our growing pains and learned from our mistakes. Nothing could happen to us. This is the same attitude that is taken with school shootings. Many other Americans believed the same thing, which is why we were also shocked with the Oklahoma City bombing. These things couldn’t possibly happen on our soil. We were brought up with the unrealistic sense of optimism (Heine & Lehman, 1995).

Oftentimes, I go into job interviews with the sense that I will get this job. I am generally extremely optimistic about it and it plays a role in how I act and behave in the interview. I have interviewed more than a few dozen times in my lifetime and it is something that works for me. I typically know when I have done bad or good. Had it not been for my overwhelming optimism, I may not have performed as well during. I may not have gotten every job that I have had an optimism bias at, but I have always left a lasting impression. I go in with the attitude that they’ll like me and I already have the job. I convince myself that it’s just a formality of seeing how well I get along with the team personality wise.

Optimistic bias is not always a good thing either. There are times I have driven to work and parked knowing that I have to come down stairs every two hours to move the car. Sometimes I assume an optimistic bias in thinking that the meter maid won’t come by and give me a ticket. After the first couple of times of receiving one, I changed my way of thinking. Having an optimistic bias can lead to procrastination (Buehler & Griffin, 2003). In turn, I ended up paying a ticket that I could have avoided.

References

• Buehler, R., & Griffin, D. (2003). Planning, personality, and prediction: The role of future focus in optimistic time predictions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 92(1-2), 80–90. doi:10.1016/S0749-5978(0300089-X ↩
• Heine, S. J., & Lehman, D. R. (1995). Cultural variation in unrealistic optimism: Does the West feel more vulnerable than the East? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(4), 595–607. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.68.4.595 ↩