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Children are full of optimism, but those rose-tinted glasses are fading-Reduced learning from negative outcomes drives hyperoptimism in children.

Johanna Habicht; Aislinn Bowler; Madeleine E Moses-Payne; Tobias U Hauser

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Title: Children are full of optimism, but those rose-tinted glasses are fading-Reduced learning from negative outcomes drives hyperoptimism in children.
Author: Johanna Habicht; Aislinn Bowler; Madeleine E Moses-Payne; Tobias U Hauser
Source: Journal of experimental psychology. General · DOI 10.1037/xge0001138 Published 2021-12-30 · Open source record
License: CC BY 4.0 deed

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Believing that good things will happen in life is essential to maintain motivation and achieve highly ambitious goals. This optimism bias, the overestimation of positive outcomes, may be particularly important during childhood when motivation must be maintained in the face of negative outcomes. In a learning task, we have thus studied the mechanisms underlying the development of optimism bias. Investigating children (8-9 year-olds), early (12-13 year-olds) and late adolescents (16-17 year-olds), we find a consistent optimism bias across age groups. However, children were particularly hyperoptimistic, with the optimism bias decreasing with age. Using computational modelling, we show that this was driven by a reduced learning from worse-than-expected outcomes, and this reduced learning explains why children are hyperoptimistic. Our findings thus show that insensitivity to bad outcomes in childhood helps to prevent taking on an overly realistic perspective and maintain motivation.

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Original journal: Journal of experimental psychology. General
Published: 2021-12-30
DOI: 10.1037/xge0001138
Open record: PMC7613292

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