gingerbreadThe Optimism Bias

2021年1月20日发(作者：countermeasure)
The Optimism Bias
By
TALI SHAROT
Saturday, May 28, 2011



Illustration by Noma Bar for TIME

We like to think of ourselves as rational
（理性的，明事理的）

creatures. We
watch our backs, weigh the odds
（权衡可能性）
, pack an umbrella. But both
neuroscience
（神经科学）

and social science
（社会科学）

suggest that we are
more optimistic than realistic. On average, we expect things to turn out better
than they wind up
（使结束）

being. People hugely underestimate their chances
of getting divorced, losing their job or being diagnosed with cancer; expect
their children to be extraordinarily gifted; envision
（想象，设想）

themselves
achieving more than their peers; and overestimate their likely life span
（寿命）

(sometimes by 20 years or more).
The belief that the future will be much better than the past and present is
known as the optimism bias. It abides
（持续，
逗留，
等候）

in every race, region
and socioeconomic
（社会经济学的）

bracket
（托架，撑架，阶层，等级段）
.
Schoolchildren playing when-I-grow- up
（当我长大时）

are rampant
（蔓延的，
茂盛的，猛烈的，不能控制的）

optimists, but so are grownups: a 2005 study
found that adults over 60 are just as likely to see the glass half full as young
adults.

You might expect optimism to erode
（腐蚀，
侵蚀，
磨损）

under the tide of news
about violent conflicts, high unemployment, tornadoes and floods and all the
threats and failures that shape
（塑造）

human life. Collectively
（总体地，共
同地）

we can grow pessimistic
（悲观的）

—
about the direction of our country
or the ability of our leaders to improve education and reduce crime. But private
optimism, about our personal future, remains incredibly resilient
（
迅速恢复精力
的）
. A survey conducted in 2007 found that while 70% thought families in
general were less successful than in their parents' day, 76% of respondents
were optimistic about the future of their own family.
(See
Optimism

Overly positive assumptions can lead to disastrous
（灾难性的，悲惨的）

miscalculations
（算错，误认，误估）

—
make us less likely to get health
checkups
（
检查，
核对，
体格检查）
, apply sunscreen
（遮光剂）

or open a savings
account, and more likely to bet the farm on a bad investment. But the bias also
protects and inspires us: it keeps us moving forward rather than to the nearest
high- rise
（高楼的，有多层的）

ledge
（岩架，岩石突出部）
. Without optimism,
our ancestors might never have ventured far from their tribes and we might all
be cave dwellers, still huddled
（缩成一团的，依偎在一起地）

together and
dreaming of light and heat.
To make progress, we need to be able to imagine alternative realities
—
better
ones
—
and we need to believe that we can achieve them. Such faith helps
motivate us to pursue our goals. Optimists in general work longer hours and
tend to earn more. Economists at Duke University found that optimists even
save more. And although they are not less likely to divorce, they are more
likely to remarry
—
an act that is, as Samuel Johnson wrote, the triumph
（胜利，
成功，业绩，欢欣）

of hope over experience.
(See if the global
index will ever beat out the GDP.)

Even if that better future is often an illusion
（错觉）
, optimism has clear benefits
in the present. Hope keeps our minds at ease
（安心，自在，不拘束）
, lowers
stress and improves physical health. Researchers studying heart-disease
patients found that optimists were more likely than nonoptimistic patients to
take vitamins, eat low-fat diets and exercise, thereby reducing their overall
（中
的，
全部的）

coronary
（冠状的，
冠状动脉的，
心脏的）

risk. A study of cancer
patients revealed that pessimistic patients under the age of 60 were more
likely to die within eight months than nonpessimistic patients of the same initial
health, status and age.
In fact, a growing body of scientific evidence points to the conclusion that
optimism may be hardwired
（硬连线的）

by evolution
（发展，
进展，
进化）

into
the human brain. The science of optimism, once scorned
（轻蔑，蔑视，嘲笑，
奚落）

as an intellectually suspect province of pep rallies
（赛前动员会）

and
smiley
（微笑的，
兴高采烈的）

faces, is opening a new window on the workings
of human consciousness. What it shows could fuel a revolution in psychology
（心理学）
, as the field comes to grips
（理解，掌握）

with accumulating
evidence that our brains aren't just stamped
（打上（标记德国），盖章于，拒
绝）

by the past. They are constantly being shaped by the future.
Hardwired for Hope?

I would have liked to tell you that my work on optimism grew out of a keen
interest in the positive side of human nature. The reality is that I stumbled
（绊
倒，
绊脚，
踉跄）

onto the brain's innate
（与生俱来的，
天生的，
固有的）

optimism
by accident. After living through Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City, I had set out
to investigate people's memories of the terrorist attacks. I was intrigued
（好奇
的
;
被迷住了的）

by the fact that people felt their memories were as accurate as
a videotape
（录像带）
, while often they were filled with errors. A survey
conducted around the country showed that 11 months after the attacks,
individuals' recollections
（回忆，
追忆，
往事）

of their experience that day were
consistent with their initial accounts (given in September 2011) only 63% of the
time. They were also poor at remembering details of the event, such as the
names of the airline carriers. Where did these mistakes in memory come from?
Scientists who study memory proposed an intriguing
（非常有趣的，引人入胜
的，神秘的）

answer: memories are susceptible
（易受……影响的，多情的，
易被感动的）

to inaccuracies partly because the neural system
（神经系统）

responsible for remembering episodes from our past might not have evolved
for memory alone. Rather, the core function of the memory system could in
fact be to imagine the future
—
to enable us to prepare for what has yet to
come. The system is not designed to perfectly replay past events, the
researchers claimed. It is designed to flexibly construct future scenarios
（情节，
剧本，事态，局面）

in our minds. As a result, memory also ends up being a
reconstructive process, and occasionally, details are deleted and others
inserted. (See why happiness isn't always good.)
To test this, I decided to record the brain activity of volunteers while they
imagined future events
—
not events on the scale of 9/11, but events in their
everyday lives
—
and compare those results with the pattern I observed when
the same individuals recalled past events. But something unexpected occurred.
Once people started imagining the future, even the most banal
（平庸的，陈腐
的）

life events seemed to take a dramatic turn for the better. Mundane
（世俗
的，世界的）

scenes brightened with upbeat
（复苏，上升，兴旺）

details as
if polished
（擦亮的，精练的，优美的，圆滑的）

by a Hollywood script doctor.
You might think that imagining a future haircut would be pretty dull. Not at all.
Here is what one of my participants pictured:
donate to Locks of Love [a charity that fashions wigs
（假发）

for young cancer
patients]. It had taken me years to grow it out, and my friends were all there to
help celebrate. We went to my favorite hair place in Brooklyn and then went to
lunch at our favorite restaurant.
I asked another participant to imagine a plane ride.
—

my favorite!
—
and then the eight- hour-long nap
（打盹儿，午睡）

in between
and then finally landing in Krakow and clapping for the pilot for providing the
safe voyage
（航行，航海，乘船旅游）
,
（柏柏油碎
石，铺有柏油碎石的飞 机跑道）
delays, no screaming babies. The world, only a
year or two into the future, was a wonderful place to live in.
If all our participants insisted on thinking positively when it came to what lay in
store for them personally, what does that tell us about how our brains are wired?
Is the human tendency for optimism a consequence of the architecture of our
brains? (See the new science of happiness.)
The Human Time Machine

To think positively about our prospects, we must first be able to imagine
ourselves in the future. Optimism starts with what may be the most
extraordinary of human talents: mental time travel, the ability to move back and
forth through time and space in one's mind. Although most of us take this
ability for granted, our capacity to envision a different time and place is in fact
critical to our survival.

It is easy to see why cognitive
（认知的，认识的）

time travel was naturally
selected for over the course of evolution. It allows us to plan ahead, to save
food and resources for times of scarcity
（缺乏，
不足，
匮乏，
萧条，
稀少）

and
to endure hard work in anticipation of a future reward. It also lets us forecast
how our current behavior may influence future generations. If we were not able
to picture the world in a hundred years or more, would we be concerned with
global warming? Would we attempt to live healthily? Would we have children?
While mental time travel has clear survival advantages, conscious foresight
（
远
见，先见之明）

came to humans at an enormous price
—
the understanding
that somewhere in the future, death awaits. Ajit Varki, a biologist at the
University of California, San Diego, argues that the awareness of mortality on
its own would have led evolution to a dead end. The despair would have
interfered with our daily function, bringing the activities needed for survival to a
stop. The only way conscious mental time travel could have arisen over the
course of evolution is if it emerged together with irrational
（物理性的，不合理
的，不明事理的）

optimism. Knowledge of death had to emerge side by side
with the persistent ability to picture a bright future.
The capacity to envision the future relies partly on the hippocamp us
（【希神】
马头鱼尾海怪；海马（大脑中被认为是感情和记忆中心的部分））
, a brain
structure that is crucial to memory. Patients with damage to their hippocampus
are unable to recollect the past, but they are also unable to construct detailed
images of future scenarios. They appear to be stuck in time. The rest of us
constantly move back and forth in time; we might think of a conversation we
had with our spouse yesterday and then immediately of our dinner plans for
later tonight.
But the brain doesn't travel in time in a random fashion. It tends to engage in
specific types of thoughts. We consider how well our kids will do in life, how we
will obtain that sought- after
（受欢迎的，吃香的）

job, afford that house on the
hill and find perfect love. We imagine our team winning the crucial game, look
forward to an enjoyable night on the town or picture a winning streak
（条纹，
斑纹；倾向，气质；裸体飞跑）

at the blackjack
（海盗旗，革制大酒杯）

table.
We also worry about losing loved ones, failing at our job or dying in a terrible
plane crash
—
but research shows that most of us spend less time mulling
over negative outcomes than we do over positive ones. When we do
contemplate defeat and heartache, we tend to focus on how these can be
avoided. (See 20 ways to get and stay happy.)
Findings from a study I conducted a few years ago with prominent
（突起的，
凸出的，
显著的，
卓越的）

neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps suggest that directing
our thoughts of the future toward the positive is a result of our frontal cortex's
（大脑皮层）

communicating with subcortical
（
皮层下的）

regions deep in our
brain. The frontal cortex, a large area behind the forehead, is the most recently
evolved part of the brain. It is larger in humans than in other primates and is
critical for many complex human functions such as language and goal setting.
Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI
功能磁共振成像
)
scanner, we recorded brain activity in volunteers as they imagined specific
events that might occur to them in the future. Some of the events that I asked
them to imagine were desirable (a great date or winning a large sum of money),
and some were undesirable (losing a wallet, ending a romantic relationship).
The volunteers reported that their images of sought- after events were richer
and more vivid than those of unwanted events.

This matched the enhanced activity we observed in two critical regions of the
brain: the amygdala
（扁桃腺）
, a small structure deep in the brain that is central
to the processing of emotion, and the rostral
（有嘴的，有喙的）

anterior
（较
早的，以前的，逻辑上在前的）

cingulate
（有色带环绕的）

cortex (rACC), an
area of the frontal cortex that modulates
（控制，缓和，调制）

emotion and
motivation. The rACC acts like a traffic conductor, enhancing the flow of
positive emotions and associations. The more optimistic a person was, the
higher the activity in these regions was while imagining positive future events
(relative to negative ones) and the stronger the connectivity between the two
structures. (See