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Optimism is the basic tendency to perceive positive events as likelier than negative ones, while optimists are individuals who believe that they will generally experience

good outcomes in life. This stable predisposition or personality trait has been thought to influence health-enhancing or health-promoting behaviour through the coping styles employed by these individuals. A number of investigators have attempted to clarify the role of optimism in the use of adaptive coping behaviour, as well as in the promotion of better psychological and physical well-being (Chang, D’Zurilla & Maydeu-Olivares, 1994; Chang et al., 1997; Davidson & Prkachin, 1997). Taylor and Sheppard (1998) revealed that individuals were more optimistic about future events that were controllable, presumably because they believed that they could take actions that would affect the occurrence of the outcome.

Optimism has been associated with attempts to regulate unpleasant feelings connected with negative events. Briefly, when their optimistic beliefs will not immediately be challenged, people underestimated the likelihood of negative events occurring because it was distressing to acknowledge that one is at risk (Taylor& Sheppard, 1998). However, people abandoned their generally optimistic outlook in favour of a pessimistic outlook when they anticipated imminent feedback for an outcome with serious consequences (Taylor& Sheppard, 1998).

As opposed to optimism as a stable personality dimension, Weinstein (1980) suggested that the development and maintenance of an optimistic bias was based on incorrect cognitive judgements individuals made that were influenced by a number of fluid illness-based factors. These factors included seriousness of the illness, commonness of the illness, personal experience/knowledge of a sufferer, sense of control over the illness, and a clear stereotype of the sufferer (refer to Table 3 on page 81). Weinstein (1980, 1984, 1987, 1989) purported that these factors interacted to

form an optimistic bias that was able to override the benefits of optimism including increased resilience, better problem solving skills and greater wellbeing, that resulted in unrealistically low perceptions of risk. This interactive relationship discussed by Weinstein forms the theoretical basis for this thesis.

Optimistic bias incorporates comparative optimism and involves a direct comparison between self and others. Although subtly different unrealistic optimism is situationally based and involves generally perceiving positive events as likelier than they actually are and that negative events are less likely than they actually are (Harris & Middleton, 1994; Taylor & Shepperd, 1998). There are two senses in which people can be unrealistically optimistic about their risk. On the one hand, they can be relatively optimistic by believing their own risk to be lower than what they believe to be the average risk. On the other hand, people can be absolutely optimistic by having a perception of their own risk that is lower than the actual risk (Eiser et al., 1993; Rothman et al., 1996). Weinstein (1980) and Perloff and Fetzer (1986) accounted for the occurrence of optimistic bias via downward comparison theory. Wills (1981) argued that people could enhance their subjective well-being not necessarily by changing their perception of themselves but by comparing themselves to a selectively disadvantaged other group. Rothman and colleagues (1996) argued that when people rated themselves, as less at risk than the average person, they were not being biased in their own risk assessments so much as they were being biased in their risk assessments of the average person. They found that people may be relatively even- handed or realistic in making judgements about their own risk but were more inclined to overestimate other’s risk than they were to underestimate their own risk. Further

work by Harris and Middleton (1994) provided clear evidence in favour of the downward comparison hypothesis of optimistic bias.

Harris and Middleton (1994) stated that optimistic bias could arise from a tendency to distance the self cognitively from a negative stereotype, essentially making cognitive errors (Eiser, et al., 1993). Notably Taylor and Brown (1988) remarked on the widespread assumption that the normal well-adjusted individual had an accurate perception of reality and was free from illusionary and stereotypical biases. However this view has been contradicted by research indicating that well-adjusted individuals were more susceptible to optimistic biases and the illusion of control, while less well- adjusted individuals were less susceptible to these illusions (McKenna, 1993).

While optimistic bias acted to reduce the anxiety that would be generated by admitting personal vulnerability while enhancing self-esteem (Kirscht et al., 1966), Dewberry and colleagues (1989) suggested that people were less unrealistically optimistic about negative events associated with strong anxiety than they were about negative events that were not associated with such high levels of anxiety (Dewberry et al., 1989). Davidson and Prkachin (1997) described that those who believed that (relative to their peers) they were unlikely to suffer future adverse events were at increased risk for later health difficulties, as a result of their decreased motivation, effort exertion, and goal attainment, to engage in health-protective behaviours. This research was considered supportive of optimistic bias because the vast majority of such individuals often reported being less likely than their cohort to encounter adverse health events (Davidson & Prkachin, 1997). Further, those who displayed an

optimistic bias tended to rate their interest for adopting health-promoting behaviours as low and their control of risk factors as high (Davidson & Prkachin, 1997).

Weinstein’s research (1987, 1989a) suggested that optimistic bias was greatest for problems that were perceived as infrequent, as preventable or controllable by individual action and with which people had little experience (Welkenhuysen et al., 1996). Moore and Rosenthal (1996) drawing on this seminal work of Weinstein reported that optimistic bias existed in relation to perception of risk for STD’s in their study of young people in Australia. As described in Chapter 3, Section 3.1 the Moore and Rosenthal (1996) study involved the inclusion of knowledge of the illness and attitude toward the illness in addition to Weinstein’s (1980, 1984, 1987) original five factors, as displayed in Table 3.

Moore and Rosenthal (1996) suggested that knowledge about others could influence personal risk perceptions, and that although optimistic biases in risk comparisons may result primarily from overestimations of others’ risk, people could maintain such biases by altering beliefs about their own risk (Moore & Rosenthal, 1996; Rothman et al., 1996). Rothman and colleagues (1996) stated that attitudes and beliefs about illness were constrained by knowledge about their personal risk. Both the Moore and Rosenthal (1996) study and the Rothman and colleagues (1996) study stated that control was potentially the most important factor in optimistic bias.

Table 3. Weinstein’s (1980) model of Optimistic Bias (OB) with Moore and

Rosenthal’s (1996) additional factors

Weinstein’s (1980) original OB factors Moore & Rosenthal’s (1996) added factors

Seriousness of the illness Commonness of the illness

Personal experience/knowledge of a sufferer

Sense of control

Stereotype of a sufferer

Knowledge of the illness Attitude toward the illness

Research has shown that both personality factors like optimism and state based factors like knowledge and control factor into decision-making processes and perception of risk of illness. In Scheier and Carver’s (1987) examination of individual differences in optimism, one of the central mechanisms offered for the relationship between optimism and health was the control optimists attempted to exert over their situation. They reported that optimism was positively correlated with the use of problem- focused coping particularly for those who perceived the stressful situations as potentially controllable. Likewise, Weinstein (1980) pointed to the importance of illness specific perceived controllability in the operation of optimistic bias (McKenna, 1993).