Three studies investigated the role of nonmotivated egocentric processes in comparative optimism (and pessimism). According to an egocentric-processes account, when people judge their comparative likelihood of experiencing an event (e.g., "Compared to the average person, how likely are you to become wealthy?"), they consider their own chances of experiencing the event more so than the referent's chances. This should produce higher comparative estimates when an event's absolute frequency is high rather than low-a prediction supported in Study 1, which manipulated event frequency through a novel, time frame manipulation. Study 2 empirically distinguished egocentrism from a related focalism account. In Study 3, comparative estimates were related to the perceived frequency of events, independent of the events' perceived desirability and controllability. Path analyses provided additional support for egocentrism, and systematic cases of comparative pessimism were observed as predicted by the egocentric-processes account.
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 21 January 2024.
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#7,795,704
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#2,038
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Outputs of similar age from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
#1
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Altmetric has tracked 26,623,241 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 69th percentile.
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