Optimism Bias

Psychologist Neil Weinstein coined the term "unrealistic optimism" in his seminal 1980 paper "Unrealistic Optimism About Future Life Events," published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Weinstein's study of 258 college students found that a majority believed their chances of negative events (divorce, drinking problems) to be lower than peers', and their chances of positive events (owning a home, living past 80) to be higher. The bias is commonly defined as the mistaken belief that one's chances of experiencing a negative event are lower (or a positive event higher) than that of one's peers. The concept appears in virtually every social psychology textbook.