How likely are you to succeed?
And how unlikely is it that something bad will happen to you, just because it happened to someone else?
Surprisingly, most people seem to think that in the future it is more likely that good things will happen to them, and less likely that bad things will happen to them.
It's a cognitive bias known as optimism bias.
According to researchers, this is one of the most widespread and proven biases in the world. One of the most cited assessments of bias from 2011 gives the following examples:
When it comes to predicting what will happen to us tomorrow, next week, or fifty years from now, we overestimate the likelihood of positive events and underestimate the likelihood of negative events.
For example, we underestimate our chances of getting divorced, having a car accident or suffering from cancer. We also expect to live longer than objective measures justify, overestimate our success in the job market, and believe our children will be uniquely talented.
Research has shown that people are optimistic about their chances in both cases. positive and negative results.
One reason for this bias is that people often have a unrealistic perception of degree of control they have about future events.
Nonetheless, this bias seems to conflict with other biases that humans have, particularly the negativity bias which shows that we feel negative emotions and situations much more strongly than positive ones.
So how can we be both inclined to avoid risk and negativity, while also being unrealistically optimistic, believing that things will be good for us?
It seems to come down to how difficult it is for humans to accurately assess risks about upcoming events.
Dr. Owen Sullivan in his research on the subject, he suggested the following potential reason:
By visualizing a simple future, we rise above the myriad of possible outcomes to focus on a simplified positive outcome. Certainly, reconciling all imaginable eventualities would take an enormous amount of time and would be tortuous.
And that’s why optimism bias exists as a heavily biased heuristic to satiate our thirst for certainty – even if it’s one of our own creations.
According to him, if we humans did nothing but think about all the negative things that could happen, it would paralyze us and prevent us from taking action. Uncertainty is one of the fundamental fears humans, and the optimism bias seems to help us feel a certain degree of certainty about the future, even if it is not based on any evidence. But it keeps us from getting caught up in fear and keeps us going.
Impact on innovation projects
Just like other cognitive biases like egocentric bias, naive realism and the endowment effectOptimism bias can lead companies and innovation teams to become unrealistic about their project's chances of success. innovation once it is published.
As a result, teams can be surprised and frustrated when they bring a new solution to market, only to discover that customers are not as enthusiastic on the new solution as hoped.
It's true, innovation projects are almost impossible to plan.
But that doesn't mean teams should just keep working on their solution and hope for the best while being optimistic.
Instead, what often helps is a structured innovation framework to obtain small, frequent feedback in order to validate whether an innovation project is going in the right direction. Personally, I use the LIVE innovation method with my clients.
This way we have evidence and data to help reduce the risk of things not going as planned.
Creativity and Innovation Expert: I help individuals and businesses develop their creativity and innovation capabilities, so you can develop the next revolutionary idea that customers love. Editor-in-Chief of Ideatovalue.com and Founder/CEO of Improvides Innovation Consulting. Coach / Speaker / Author / TEDx Speaker / Voted as one of the most influential innovation bloggers.