Six experiments investigated people's optimism in competitions. The studies involved hypothetical and real competitions (course grades in Experiments 1 and 2, a trivia game in Experiments 3-5, and a poker game in Experiment 6) in which the presence of shared adversities and benefits (factors that would generally hinder or help the absolute performance of all competitors) was manipulated. Shared adversities tended to reduce people's subjective likelihoods of winning, whereas shared benefits tended to increase them. The findings suggest that when people judge their likelihood of winning, their assessments of their own strengths and weaknesses have greater impact than their assessments of their competitors' strengths and weaknesses. We identify egocentrism and focalism as two causes of the bias. The experiments revealed moderators of this bias, but also illustrated its robust nature across a variety of conditions.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 04 January 2022.
All research outputs
#11,900,255
of 34,360,257 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Personality & Social Psychology
#4,838
of 8,033 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#57,521
of 191,255 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Personality & Social Psychology
#90
of 132 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,360,257 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 64th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 8,033 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 34.9. This one is in the 38th percentile – i.e., 38% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 191,255 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 68% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 132 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 30th percentile – i.e., 30% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
