Sufficient Grounds for Optimism?: The Relationship Between Perceived Controllability and Optimistic Bias

Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1996, pp. 9-52

PETER HARRIS

University of Hertfordshire

Evidence that perceived controllability is associated with optimistic bias is re

viewed. There is sufficient evidence that people are optimistically biased about negative events they perceive to be controllable. More work is needed to establish whether this is also true of positive events. There is evidence also that people often hold beliefs of their personal superiority on control-related dimensions. More

experimental studies testing hypotheses about the mechanisms linking perceived

control and optimistic bias are required. Future work should also expand the sophistication with which control is treated conceptually and empirically and the range of potential mechanisms examined.

The best way to predict the future is to shape it.

(BMW advertising slogan)

Research has shown not only that people typically give a great deal of

thought to the future (Markus & Nurius, 1986), but that they tend to be optimistic when doing so. In particular, there is evidence that people typically perceive themselves to have better than average chances of

experiencing a range of desirable future outcomes, whether the occur rence of positive events or the absence of negative ones (Hoorens, 1994;

Weinstein, 1989a). This phenomenon has been variously referred to as, among other things, "unrealistic" optimism (Weinstein, 1980) or "opti

mistic bias" (Weinstein, 1989a). There is now a sizeable literature con-

I would like to thank Mansur Lalljee, Paul Sparks, Bill Klein and Neil Weinstein for their

helpful comments earlier drafts of this manuscript. A draft of this paper prepared

while I was visiting scholar at the Universities of Oxford and Amsterdam. I would like

to thank Mansur Lalljee and Wilma Otten for their indispensable help in organizing these visits, colleagues at both institutions for making them so enjoyable and productive, and

colleagues at Hertfordshire for enabling to go.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Peter Harris, who isat The School of Social Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QN, England.

9

SUFFICIENT GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM?:

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERCEIVED

CONTROLLABILITY AND OPTIMISTIC BIAS

10 HARRIS

taining both demonstrations of optimistic bias and explorations of the

factors that are associated with it (Weinstein, 1995).A claim frequently made in this literature is that people tend