Individuals with mild or severe depression show a loss or reversal of the optimism bias, respectively. With only a little controversy, this optimism bias is accepted as a human universal, spanning all ages, genders and cultures, with one important exception. Sharot further implicates areas of the inferior frontal gyrus as critical for maintaining this biased information integration. Sharot has suggested that this optimism bias is maintained by a bias in how our brains integrate evidence, with a more efficient and faithful incorporation of positive evidence, relative to negative. Further, a vast majority of individuals rate their abilities as “above-average,” a statistical impossibility, for everything ranging from attractiveness, to competency, to driving abilities. We consistently over-estimate the probability of positive future events such as long life, professional success, and raising talented children, while discounting the probability of the negative, like divorce, car accidents or health problems. One of the most well established deviations from objective rationality is that a hallmark of a healthy human psyche is a bias towards optimism and overconfidence. Although rationality is often presented as the pinnacle of human cognitive abilities, the behavior of our species often departs from rational expectations.
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