In Search of Realistic Optimism

Meaning, Knowledge, and Warm Fuzziness

Sandra L. Schneider
University of South Florida
Is it better to be realistic or optimistic? A realistic outlook
improves chances to negotiate the environment success-
fully, whereas an optimistic outlook places priority on
feeling good. But are realistic and optimistic outlooks
necessarily in conflict? The author suggests that the fuzzy
nature of accuracy typically places only loose boundaries
on what it means to be realistic. As a result, there are many
forms of optimism that do not, in principle, yield unrealistic
assessments. Nevertheless, there remain numerous "opti-
mistic biases " that do involve self-deception, or convincing
oneself of desired beliefs without appropriate reality
checks. The author describes several ways that realistic
and unrealistic optimism can be differentiated and explores
the impact of this distinction for current views of optimism.
This critique reveals how positive psychology may benefit
from a focus on personal meaning and knowledge as they
relate to making the most of life.
U
p until recently, the typical hallmark of mental
health has included a firm grasp on reality. The
mentally healthy person could be identified as
one who accurately assessed information available in the
environment (Jahoda, 1958). Taylor and Brown (1988)
shook the establishment view by suggesting that people
were actually healthier mentally if their sense of reality was
biased in a positive direction. They bolstered their claim
with a review of literature suggesting that healthier people
tend to overestimate the degree of control they have on the
environment, tend to see themselves in an overly positive
light, and tend to be unrealistically optimistic about the
future.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Seligman, Abramson,
Peterson, and their colleagues (e.g., Buchanan & Seligman,
1995) have popularized the notions of optimistic and pes-
simistic explanatory styles. In their search for the source of
learned helplessness responses, they discovered that peo-
ple's tendency to give up efforts to change bad outcomes
was due to a predisposition to view bad outcomes as being
caused by internal, stable, and global characteristics. Re-
search into this pessimistic explanatory style has linked it
again and again to heightened risks of both physical and
mental disorders (e.g., Peterson & Seligman, 1984; Peter-
son, Seligman, & Valliant, 1988; Peterson, Seligman,
Yurko, Martin, & Friedman, 1998; Weisse, 1992). An
optimistic explanatory style, on the other hand, in which
people tend to take credit for their successes and blame
failures on situation-specific external factors (i.e., self-
serving bias), has been associated with better outcomes in
terms of health and achievement. According to Peterson et
al. (1998), people who espoused an optimistic perspective
in childhood outlived their more negatively oriented coun-
terparts by an average of almost two years. Here again, the
research seems to suggest that an optimistic outlook is
superior to one that is more realistic.
During roughly the same time period, Scheier and
Carver (1985, 1987, 1992) were studying optimism using
the now-popular Life Orientation Test. They defined opti-
mism, not as a function of causal attributions, but as a
general disposition to expect good outcomes. They found
that optimists reported fewer physical symptoms, better
health habits, and better coping strategies. Even among a
group of women who had experienced the recent bad
outcome of being diagnosed with breast cancer, Carver et
al. (1993) found that those with an optimistic personality
experienced less distress, engaged in more active coping,
and were less likely to engage in avoidance or denial
strategies.
Of course, other scholars have argued that research
does not convincingly show an advantage of optimism over
more realistic perspectives. Colvin and Block (1994) con-
tended that the arguments concerning the benefits of opti-
mistic biases or illusions often lack logical force. Their
primary concerns included problematic criteria for identi-
fying optimistic illusions and the lack of evidence for a
causal link between these illusions and improved mental
health. Among other things, they pointed out that there are
rarely clear criteria for assessing accuracy in the context of
trait descriptions (see also Hayes & Dunning, 1997), which
is one of the most common contexts for work on overly
positive self-views. Even when an illusion can be verified,
Editor's note. Kennon M. Sheldon and Laura King developed this
Positive Psychology section.
Author's note. Many thanks go to Monica Barnes, Christine Caffray,
Gwen Campbell, Valerie Haskell, Ed Levine, Lou Penner, and Bill Sacco,
as well as participants in my "Goals and Motives" seminar, for their
comments and sugge,stions related to the ideas presented here. I am
especially grateful to/Bob Wright for insights gained from our many rich
discussions of motivation, optimism, and being realistic.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to San-
dra L. Schneider, Department of Psychology, University of South Florida,
4202 East Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620-8200. Electronic mail may
be sent to sandra@chuma.cas.usf.edu.
250
March 2001 American Psychologist
Copyright 2001 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/01/$5.00
Vol. 56, No. 3, 250-263 DOI: 10.1O37//O0O3-O66X.56.3.250
Sandra L.
Schneider
Photo by Nachfnon
Photogiophy
a causal connection to mental or physical health can rarely
be shown.
There are others who have focused on demonstrating
the dangers of optimistic illusions. In his studies of unre-
alistic optimism, Weinstein (1980, 1984; Weinstein &
Klein, 1996) has provided evidence of the harmful effects
of optimistic biases in risk perception related to a host of
health hazards. Those who underestimate their risk are
routinely less likely to show interest in taking preventive
action. For example, Weinstein, Lyons, Sandman, and
Cuite (1998) found that those who optimistically underes-
timated the risk of radon in their homes were less likely
than others to engage in risk detection and risk reduction
behaviors. In related research, Kunda and Klein (Klein &
Kunda, 1992; Kunda, 1990) have provided several exam-
ples of defensively motivated reasoning that helps maintain
a positive self-view, but is likely to have harmful long-term
consequences. For instance, cigarette smokers may avoid
thinking about or trying to quit smoking by adopting self-
serving biases that discount their personal susceptibility to
the risks of smoking or by boosting their self-view through
a variety of personal affirmations (Gibbons, Eggieston, &
Benthin, 1997; Steele, 1988).
In a similar vein, Robins and John (1997; John &
Robins, 1994) have found that optimistic illusions of per-
formance are more likely to be associated with narcissism
than mental health. Shedler, Mayman, and Manis (1993)
have repeatedly found (hat those who provide optimisti-
cally biased reports of (heir mental health are less resistant
to stress as measured by coronary reactivity (i.e., changes
in heart rate and diastolic blood pressure) than either truly
healthy or manifestly distressed participants. Similar find-
ings have been observed among those who repress negative
emotions (L. Brown etal-, 1996; Gross & Levenson, 1997).
Those who present an optimistic assessment of their emo-
tional stale by denying their negative emotions, even to
themselves (Derakshan & Eysenck, 1999), tend (o have
significantly stronger physiological reactions to stress than
those who are more realistic about their negative emotions.
Covering the middle ground are those who argue that
slight optimistic illusions are beneficial, bui only if they do
not distort reality in ways that might be harmful. Epstein
(1992) argued that, "In many ambiguous real-life situa-
tions . . . moderate self-overestimation is intrinsically self-
rewarding and produces no unfortunate consequences. . . .
However, this does not necessarily mean that reality ori-
entation is an unimportant component of mental health" (p.
832). Similarly, Baumeister (1988) suggested that there
may be an optimal margin of illusion that allows people to
see themselves as slightly better lhan they really are, but
does not typically lead to behaviors based on false
assumptions.
Most views, whether in support of or in opposition to
the value of optimistic biases, seem to be based on the
assumption that optimistic and realistic perspectives are
mutually exclusive. In what follows, both optimistic biases
and realistic assessments are explored to help identify
whether and when optimism and realism can peacefully
co-exist. This exploration suggests several implications for
the role of optimism in well-being.
The Fuzzy Nature of Reality
How realistic can people be? There seems to be a common
assumption that people can usually be accurate in their
judgments if they want to be. Being accurate typically
means that one has arrived at a position that is truthful or
captures the reality of the situation. However, it also im-
plies that there is one exact knowable truth or reality. But
therein lies the rub. There is very little evidence that this
kind of accuracy exists in many of the situations that
humans regularly encounter. Even if it sometimes does, it
may be rare for humans to be in a position to access this
objective or accurate assessment.
Consider, for instance, one of the research paradigms
used to document the existence of optimistic biases (e.g.,
Alicke, 1985; J. D. Brown, 1986). In the typical study,
participants might be asked to judge how friendly they are
relative to some reference class. One of the first issues to
spring to mind is that social judgments of this type do not
have easily identifiable objective criteria for establishing
truth (Colvin & Block, 1994; Dunning, 1999; Kenny &
Albright, 1987). We may not even agree on what behaviors
contribute to friendliness. If a person calls herself very
friendly and someone else claims she is not, there is no
clear-cut way to resolve the difference of opinion. Al-
though there may often be indicators about which most of
us can agree, there is considerable latitude in how we may
reasonably define states of the world.
Because of this latitude in social judgments, the evi-
dence used to demonstrate the existence of a positive bias
in this research paradigm is only indirect. The standard
result is ihat the vast majority of people report being above
average or above the 50th percentile in friendliness. The
March 2001 American Psychologist
251
conclusion is that an optimistic or self-enhancing bias must
exist because the vast majority of people cannot be friend-
lier than average. But why can't they? If people's criteria
for friendliness differ from one another in any way, every-
body could be friendlier than average (even without
having to stipulate a negatively skewed distribution of
friendliness).
As a simplified example, imagine that one half of the
group in question believes friendliness rests primarily on
being helpful and, because they want to be friendly, they do
routinely go out of their way to be helpful, more so than the
other half of the group. Suppose that mis second half of the
group believes friendliness is primarily a function of being
pleasant and, because they want to be friendly, they rou-
tinely go out of their way to be pleasant, more so than the
group focused on helpfulness. Now both halves can accu-
rately report that they are above average or among the top
50% in friendliness because according to their own criteria,
they are. To say that there is an error requires that there be
clear-cut and agreed-upon criteria (not to mention cutoffs).
But problems associated with the lack of just these
types of criteria have plagued virtually every domain
within the social sciences (see, e.g., Smithson, 1989;
Stanovich & West, 2000). Even the guidelines set forth in
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association,
1994) demonstrate that exacting criteria for categorization
cannot be expected:
In DSM-IV, there is no assumption that each category of mental
disorder is a completely discrete entity with absolute boundaries
dividing it from other mental disorders or from no mental disor-
der. . . . The clinician using DSM-IV should therefore consider
that individuals sharing a diagnosis are likely to be heterogeneous
even in regard to the defining features of the diagnosis and that
boundary cases will be difficult to diagnose in any but a proba-
bilistic fashion, (p. xxii)
Often, those studying accuracy seem to overlook the pos-
sibility that one specific, objectively verifiable state of
affairs may not exist and that, even if it did, people might
lack the necessary tools to become completely aware of it.
Truth is imprecise in a social world in which meaning
is created through agreed-upon symbol systems. Moreover,
the passage of time ensures a constantly changing environ-
ment, and the myriad of causes underlying any given
experience is largely inaccessible to the human individual's
perceptual and cognitive systems (ergo the need for social
science). However, this complexity does not imply that
truth and accuracy are fictions. It simply suggests that there
may be considerable leeway in what it is reasonable to
accept as true or accurate.
Philosophical approaches to epistemology often lead
to the conclusion that we cannot define knowledge as a
particular point, but that knowledge, or lack thereof, is
more reasonably captured as a space, range, or continuum
(see Smithson, 1989, for a review). In a recent example,
Yaniv and Foster (1995) have suggested that knowledge
can be characterized according to its graininess. The larger
the grain, the less precisely defined is our knowledge.
Suppose a person knows that the first walk on the moon
took place in the 1960s. The person is correct, but the
graininess of his or her knowledge is more coarse than that
of someone who can specify the exact year, or day, or hour,
et cetera.
Fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic (Zadeh, 1965, 1982)
take into account that information can be more-or-less true.
In an early study of fuzzy sets in humans, Oden (1977)
found that classification of different liquid-holding vessels
as "mugs" was not all or none; there are many things that
are more-or-less mugs. Studies of concepts and categori-
zation have routinely confirmed the existence of graded and
ill-defined boundaries of membership (e.g., Rosch, 1978).
Fuzzy rules have made it possible to model this human
flexibility in representation. For instance, handwriting rec-
ognition systems can use a small number of fuzzy rules to
recognize handwritten numerals written by thousands of
different individuals with accuracy rates above 95% (Chi &
Yan, 1995). Even with simple concepts, reality can be
fuzzy. How much more so in the case of complex concepts
and interpretations?
Distinguishing Fuzzy Meaning and
Fuzzy Knowledge
Fuzzy or not, there is a reality. Not all optimistic thinking
is realistic, even if we concede that reality is at least
partially negotiable and subjective. So, what does it mean
to be realistic? Criteria for being realistic typically include
objectivity and rationality, but defining these concepts is a
topic of long-standing philosophical debate (e.g., Gigeren-
zer, 2000; Hollis & Lukes, 1982; James, 1907; Megill,
1994b; Moser, 1990; R. W. Newell, 1986; Simon, 1981;
Wittgenstein, 1969). Roughly, the former concept requires
that information be represented as it actually is in the
environment (e.g., Megill, 1994a), and the latter concept
requires logical consistency in the process of decision
making (e.g., Baron, 1985). A person is realistic to the
extent that his or her actions are sensitive to experienced
contingencies in the environment and are guided by a
coherent value system.
Being realistic also requires negotiating the uncer-
tainty and lack of specificity that is a part of our environ-
ment. I suggest that there are at least two distinct types of
fuzzy boundaries. One type, labeled fuzzy meaning, pro-
vides the leeway for each of us to extract personal meaning
from our experiences. The other, labeled fuzzy knowledge,
characterizes situations in which our knowledge of the
environment is lacking in precision.
Fuzzy Meaning Arises From Interpretive
Latitude
DeGrandpre (2000; see also Gibson, 1979) recently pro-
vided a persuasive case that the action-consequence con-
tingencies that form the basis of objective reality also form
the foundation of our sense of meaning. He posited that
phenomenological responses to environmental stimuli are
largely responsible for our conscious experience, but that
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March 2001 American Psychologist
the motivational qualities of experienced contingencies
guide our decisions. From this, he argued that reality is a
function not only of the information in the environment but
also of what it means to the individual.
[M]eaning remains a crucial dependent variable in psychological
science because, without the concept of meaning, psychologists
lack the vocabulary for distinguishing between stimuli, which are
measurable phenomena situated in the physical and social world,
and the acquired significance of stimuli, which is both dynamic
and variable across individuals. (DeGrandpre, 2000, p. 733)
Reality is fuzzy not so much because we disagree on
the measurable characteristics of the stimuli we perceive
(although this may occasionally happen), but because we
have different views of what the stimuli mean. (Movie
reviews come to mind as an obvious if simplistic example.
Everyone agrees on what events took place in the movie,
but few may agree on the movie's strengths and weak-
nesses or its significance.) Ultimately, our sense of mean-
ing rests on subjective evaluation criteria that depend on
our personal history of experiences, on our momentary and
enduring values, and on perceived situational constraints.
Because of the inherent variability in people's experiences,
values, and situational constraints, the concept of accuracy
has only limited applicability with respect to meaning. If
our experiences, values, and situational constraints did not
contribute to our sense of meaning (e.g., if we were in
denial or experiencing a dissociative disorder) or if we
were wholly indifferent to the loose social boundaries on
meaning (e.g., if we decided friendliness involves hurting
others), then our judgments of meaning would, by defini-
tion, be inaccurate. Otherwise, we have considerable lati-
tude in deciding what significance we assign to events and
what lessons we choose to learn from our experience.
Fuzzy Knowledge Arises From Factual
Uncertainty
Not all fuzzy boundaries on reality involve subjective eval-
uation of the meaning of experience. Some fuzzy bound-
aries represent a lack of information or uncertainty about
the likelihood that some as yet unperceived event will or
has occurred. For instance, judgments of the likelihood that
we have contracted (or will contract) the HIV virus or that
our boss will judge our performance as acceptable involve
fuzziness due to an absence of needed information. In this
case, we are not trying to extract the personal meaning of
an event that has been or is being experienced. Instead, the
event of interest is not currently observable to or known
by the individual, and the fuzzy boundary circumscribes
the individual's beliefs about the event's likelihood of
occurring.
Fuzziness in knowledge captures the extent to which
we do not know about a given state of affairs, whereas
fuzziness in meaning represents the latitude we have in
interpreting the significance of a known state of affairs.
Fuzzy knowledge and fuzzy meaning have different impli-
cations for being realistic. Given the constraints of reality,
we do not have the liberty to decide that we do not have
HIV in the same way that we have the liberty to decide that
particular types of behavior meet our criteria for being
friendly. Moreover, our interpretation of the meaning of
potential symptoms has no impact on whether the symp-
toms are actually being caused by HIV, just as our inter-
pretation of the meaning of the boss's behavior does not
change what the boss really intended. Realistically re-
sponding to fuzzy knowledge requires sensitivity to our
lack of information about an object, state, or event that may
be well defined. In contrast, realistically responding to
fuzzy meaning requires sensitivity to the lack of rigid
constraints on how we choose to interpret the personal
implications of an object, state, or event (cf. Zadeh, 1978,
1980; Zhang, 1998).
Fundamentally, the accuracy of judgments involving
fuzzy knowledge does not depend on the idiosyncracies of
our experiences, values, and situational constraints in the
same way that the accuracy of meaning does. Instead, the
accuracy of knowledge depends on the quality, quantity,
diagnosticity, and specificity of the information on which
judgments are based. Nevertheless, assessing the accuracy
of knowledge-based judgments is often difficult because
we rarely have access to the kinds of complete causal
models of the environment that would enable us to gauge
the value of our predictions as a function of the available
information. Reality is fuzzy in these instances because of
our uncertainty about the situation of interest.
Defining Realistic Optimism
If we define optimism broadly as the tendency to maintain
a positive outlook, then realistic optimism is the tendency
to maintain a positive outlook within the constraints of the
available "measurable phenomena situated in the physical
and social world" (DeGrandpre, 2000, p. 733). With re-
spect to fuzzy meaning, realistic optimism involves en-
hancing and focusing on the favorable aspects of our ex-
periences. Examples include being lenient in our evaluation
of past events, actively appreciating the positive aspects of
our current situation, and routinely emphasizing possible
opportunities for the future. With respect to fuzzy knowl-
edge, realistic optimism involves hoping, aspiring, and
searching for positive experiences while acknowledging
what we do not know and accepting what we cannot know.
In dealing with unresolved uncertainties, realistic optimism
involves hoping for and working toward desired outcomes
without having the expectation that particular outcomes
will occur, especially with little or no effort to bring them
about. Instead, the hopes and aspirations associated with
realistic optimism are coupled with a focus on possible
opportunities to increase the likelihood of desirable and
personally meaningful outcomes contingent on situational
constraints.
Realistic optimism includes all of the optimistic pro-
cesses that can be shown to operate within the constraints
of fuzzy reality. Several of the processes and products
described in the optimism literature are examples of real-
istic optimism. In many cases, however, research results
combine processes or participants in such a way that it is
not possible to parse out the data that represent realistic as
opposed to unrealistic forms of optimism. In principle,
March 2001 American Psychologist
253
realistic optimism can be expected to yield the positive
outcomes of optimistic processes (Folkman & Moskowitz,
2000; Peterson, 2000; Scheier & Carver, 1992; Taylor,
Kemeny, Reed, Bower, & Gruenewald, 2000) without si-
multaneous exposure to the disadvantages of reality distor-
tions that characterize many of the so-called optimistic
biases. The goal, then, is to examine both meaning-based
and knowledge-based fuzzy boundaries on reality to dis-
tinguish between realistic and unrealistic optimism.
Realistic Optimism Need Not Be
an Oxymoron
Because accuracy is often loosely bounded, an optimistic
viewpoint can be simultaneously positively biased and
within the limits of what it is reasonable to conclude.
Hence, optimism can represent a rational perspective on
underdetermined circumstances. At other times, optimism
can represent a form of self-deception in which one con-
vinces oneself that things are different from what available
information would suggest (see, e.g., Greenwald, 1997;
Mele, 1997; Paulhus & John, 1998; Wright & Schneider,
1999). This happens when optimism is not constrained
even by the loose boundaries of fuzzy accuracy, or when
fuzzy meaning and fuzzy knowledge become confused
with one another. Because of this fuzziness in the nature of
reality, it is often difficult to tell the difference between
optimism that remains realistic and optimism that supports
self-deception.
Below, I describe three forms of realistic optimism, in
which optimistic thinking need not depart from reality. For
ease of exposition, these have been tied to assessments of
the past, present, and future. In the subsequent sections, I
differentiate realistic optimism from related optimistic and
defensive biases that often lead to unrealistic conclusions.
Finally, I suggest how the construct of realistic optimism
can further our attempts to develop a positive psychology.
Leniency for the Past: The "Benefit of the
Doubt" Principle
Although optimism is often characterized as a positive
outlook with respect to the future, the concept can be
extended to experiences in the past by acknowledging the
fuzzy boundaries on interpreting events. When we evaluate
past performances or events that we have experienced, we
can take advantage of the latitude in potential reasonable
interpretations to select an interpretation that focuses on the
positive aspects of the situation. Hence, a man can con-
clude that he gave a good talk or that his daughter played
well in the soccer game or that the weather was nice
provided in each case that there is some arguably reason-
able set of criteria on which one could base those judg-
ments and a lack of overwhelming evidence in opposition.
Obviously, both the criteria for the judgments and the
cutoffs for evaluation are subjectively determined. Hence,
there is considerable latitude in what one can conclude
without exceeding the bounds of the potential reality. We
can reasonably choose to give ourselves, others, or the
situation the benefit of the doubt.
Leniency involves allowing a larger set of outcomes
and events to be classified as subjectively positivegiving
potentially questionable outcomes and events the benefit of
the doubt. One way that this can happen has been referred
to by Ashford and Kreiner (1999) as refraining. This pro-
cess involves the search for positive aspects of a situation
to neutralize or balance negative aspects. In the case of
stigmatized jobs, for instance, an otherwise undesirable
menial task might be reframed in terms of the task's es-
sential role in some larger goal or process. When it is
realistic, this sort of reframing does not involve fabricating
positive attributes (e.g., pretending or telling oneself that a
boring activity is exciting); rather it transforms the meaning
of a behavior by discovering a perspective that is simulta-
neously truthful and favorable.
Leniency can also correspond to the adoption of rel-
atively modest thresholds of minimum acceptability. A
drizzly day can either ruin or save the family reunion,
depending on whether one considers it relative to sunshine
or a downpour. This is not to say that leniency causes us to
deny the fact that sunshine would be better or to focus on
the fact that a downpour would be worse. The acceptability
threshold simply determines whether we are satisfied with
a drizzly family reunion and, as a result, whether we enjoy
the event. The process of leniency involves accepting the
reality of the current situation and finding a satisfying
meaning therein, as opposed to misconstruing or denying
the facts of the situation. To feel better about the family
reunion one could deny that it is drizzling, but that would
be self-deception, not leniency.
Leniency and future-oriented optimism may work to-
gether to enhance favorable interpretations that converge
on being realistic, especially in the context of achievement.
The future-oriented aspects of optimism are likely to sup-
port relatively high, and even potentially unrealistic, aspi-
rations (e.g., Taylor & Brown, 1988). Given fuzzy knowl-
edge about what we will be able to accomplish, however,
aspirations themselves are likely to be fuzzy or graded, so
that different potential outcomes will be viewed as more or
less acceptable. The specific value we choose a priori as the
stated aspiration is likely to be close to the best possible
outcome, reflecting the hope that our efforts will be max-
imally effective and situational constraints on success will
be minimal. On occasions when performance falls short of
aspirations, leniency can manifest itself as a flexible lower
bound on acceptable performance. Hence, the realistic op-
timist might shoot for an "A," but, when it happens, be
satisfied with a "B."
When our hopes for performance are not completely
met, realistic optimism involves accepting what cannot
now be changed, rather than condemning or second-guess-
ing ourselves. Focusing on the successful aspects of per-
formance (even when the success is modest) promotes
positive affect, reduces self-doubt, and helps to maintain
motivation (e.g., McFarland & Ross, 1982). In this way,
leniency may prevent minor downward fluctuations in per-
formance from becoming reasons for questioning general
goals or abilities. Leniency also prevents the debilitating
effects of perfectionism (e.g., Pacht, 1984). Nevertheless,
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March 2001 American Psychologist
realistic optimism does not include or imply expectations
that things will improve on their own. Wishful thinking of
this sort typically has no reliable supporting evidence.
Instead, the opportunity-seeking component of realistic op-
timism motivates efforts to improve future performances
on the basis of what has been learned from past
performances.
Although more will be said in the discussion of self-
deception, it is important to note that leniency, in and of
itself, represents realistic optimism, but phenomena related
to leniency can produce distorted thinking. If leniency is
not recognized as a subjective evaluation or it is not applied
to self and others equally, it can lead to erroneous impres-
sions about differences. For instance, if a woman playing
tennis gives her own performance, but not that of her
opponent, the benefit of the doubt, she may erroneously
overestimate her own ability relative to her opponent's.
Realistic optimism requires sensitivity to the difference
between perception of a phenomenon and evaluation of its
meaning. To prevent distortion, leniency must be based on
the motivation to accurately apprehend the state of affairs,
coupled with some level of awareness that the evaluation or
subjective meaning of this state is in large proportion a
matter of personal choice.
Appreciation for the Present: The
Appreciate the Moment" Principle
Appreciation involves being alert to the positive aspects of
the current situation and feeling thankful for what one has
and for one's circumstances. This requires not only a
positive perspective in the present but also conscious
awareness of features in the surround. The latter, in fact, is
something that may be surprisingly rare. Especially when
we are engaging in routine activities, we often do so
mindlessly (Langer, 1997) or as though we were on auto-
matic pilot (Cialdini, 1993). If we learn to bring our atten-
tion to the current state, we can choose to focus on positive
aspects of the situation and to remind ourselves of the
potential sources of good feelings that might otherwise pass
unnoticed.
Appreciation can often serve as a cognitive form of
dishabituation wherein routine people, places, things, and
events that are typically taken for granted can be brought
into awareness and acknowledged as important and posi-
tive contributors to one's experience. Appreciating what
we like about our home, our family, and our joband even
about ourselvescan promote positive affect, more satis-
fying relationships and improved coping with stress (Af-
fleck & Tennen, 1996; Fincham & Beach, 1999; Folkman
& Moskowitz, 2000; Murray, 1999). Feeling good in the
moment has also been associated with an increase in help-
ing behavior (e.g., Isen, 1993), suggesting that others may
reap the benefits of this type of realistic optimism as well.
Appreciation may be especially important in situa-
tions of long-term commitment or difficult-to-reverse situ-
ations (Affleck & Tennen, 1996). In this case, realistic
optimism corresponds to an attempt to make the best of a
situation. Research on decision making, for instance, has
documented that people often tend to inflate the quality of
an item they have chosen relative to the other options
available for choice. In one study, Svenson and Shamoun
(1997) found that, after selecting which university program
they would attend, students gradually enhanced their eval-
uation of the selected program by (a) increasing their
assessment of the relative value of advantages, (b) more
heavily weighting dimensions that represented advantages,
and (c) even reframing potential disadvantages as advan-
tages. Similarly, Ashford and Kreiner (1999) have sug-
gested that workers transform the meanings attached to
stigmatized jobs through processes such as recalibrating to
find a reference point that increases satisfaction with the
job and refocusing to direct attention to the better rather
than poorer characteristics of the job. These same sorts of
shifts in subjective values and attention have been found
among those who are most satisfied with their marriage
partner (Murray, 1999) and among those who have most
effectively adjusted to traumatic events (Janoff-Bulman,
1989). Although often characterized as illusions, it is not
clear that changes in the subjective meanings and impor-
tance of phenomena is unreasonable in response to changes
in personal commitments or existing conditions.
Appreciation helps to improve satisfaction and can
remain within the limits of reality to the extent that we
remain aware of the objective facts of the situation, even as
we choose to focus on positive implications of those facts
(cf. Norem, 1998). Changes in subjective evaluations have
often been characterized as indicative of limited cognitive
abilities or even irrational processes (Fischhoff, Slovic, &
Lichtenstein, 1988; Payne, Bettman, & Johnson, 1992;
Slovic, 1995). However, in many cases, their adaptive
significance may be better understood as a flexibility in
focus that helps maximize enjoyment in circumstances that
can readily support any number of subjective interpreta-
tions (see Markman & Brendl, 2000, for a related view on
the influence of goals on subjective values).
Just as leniency judgments often rely on flexible eval-
uations that help us to accept less than ideal outcomes,
appreciation typically involves the selection of a reference
point for evaluation that emphasizes the positive aspects of
our current state. So, for example, there may be little or no
fuzziness in our perception of how much water is in a glass,
but the subjective meaning of that quantity, whether it
leaves the glass half full or half empty, is a matter of one's
chosen perspective.
In his article describing reasons why wealth does not
necessarily increase happiness, Csikszentmihalyi (1999)
pointed out that when people evaluate their own wealth,
they tend to choose anchors that focus on the negative:
When resources are unevenly distributed, people evaluate their
possessions not in terms of what they need to live in comfort, but
in comparison with those who have the most. Thus, the relatively
affluent feel poor in comparison with the very rich and are
unhappy as a result, (p. 823)
The dictates of rationality have no say over which reference
points are appropriate nor can they address how we ought
to feel about our circumstances (see, e.g., Zeelenberg,
March 2001 American Psychologist
255
1999). We have considerable freedom to choose how we
will evaluate our status. Anchors that promote appreciation
for our situation are more likely to encourage a sense of
happiness.
However, not all seemingly positive anchors lead to
appreciation. Anchors that encourage social comparisons
may be especially troublesome. In the previous example,
for instance, people might compare their possessions to
those of the less affluent and experience a sense of supe-
riority. This type of social comparison breeds adversarial
competition and contributes to the motivation to engage
in self-servingand self-deceptivebiases (Covington,
2000; Klein & Kunda, 1993; Suls & Wills, 1991). Social
comparison is not purely appreciation, because the positive
evaluation of one's own situation comes into relief only by
evoking negative evaluations of others. Reference points
based on one's own previous situation, or other modest or
neutral criteria as suggested by Csikszentmihalyi (1999),
may be more likely to result in appreciation without simul-
taneously provoking self-serving and antagonistic biases.
Opportunity-Seeking for the Future: The
"Windows of Opportunity" Principle
Realistic optimism may be particularly important when we
are considering future goals and plans. Here, realistic pos-
itive thinking creates an overriding perspective on goal-
striving or problem solving that depicts the situation as a
challenge or an opportunity rather than as a chore or a
problem. The term problem (with synonyms such as pre-
dicament, obstacle, and difficulty) implies that the current
state is negative and that actions must be successful to
establish a satisfactory state. A challenge, on the other
hand, implies an acceptable current state that offers a
potential opportunity for bringing about a beneficial
change. This framing can be quite powerful. Even a simple
refraining of hypothetical decision scenarios has been
shown to influence willingness to take risks, perceived
decision conflict, and aspiration levels (e.g., Schneider,
1992), as well as the perceived favorability and persuasive
appeal of messages (see Levin, Schneider, & Gaeth, 1998,
for a review).
When applied to an individual's perspective on goals,
dozens of studies of achievement motivation and self-
regulation demonstrate that goal frames focused on ap-
proaching positive states are functionally superior to goal
frames focused on avoiding negative states (Atkinson,
1957, 1964; Covington, 2000; Elliot & Sheldon, 1997;
Elliot, Sheldon, & Church, 1997; Higgins, 1996, 1999;
Nicholls, 1984; Scheier & Carver, 1992, 1993; Weiner,
1980). In comparison with negative avoidance motivation,
positive approach motivation leads to greater persistence,
greater flexibility in strategies to reach a goal, greater
creativity in solutions, better outcomes, and higher subjec-
tive well-being. Approach motivation is also associated
with a greater desire to obtain information about how to
reach the goal, selection of more realistic aspiration levels,
and greater internal motivation.
An opportunity-seeking or approach mentality also
helps to make the problem-solving process itself enjoyable
(Covington, 2000; Higgins, 1996, 1999). Positive affect
and approach motivation are highly related and may have
similar causes and consequences (e.g., Ashby, Isen, &
Turken, 1999; Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000; Isen, 1984,
1993). The search for opportunities can in itself be fulfill-
ing, not to mention providing reinforcement for future
goal-striving. Csikszentmihalyi (1997) suggested that hap-
piness depends in large measure on the extent to which one
can become engrossed and enjoy the process of working
toward goals. He argued, "People are happy not because of
what they do, but because of how they do it" (Csikszent-
mihalyi, 1999, p. 826). An approach to goal-striving that
emphasizes hope and opportunity-seeking can support both
happiness and accomplishment without compromising re-
alismagain, because people have considerable latitude in
realistically choosing how they will construe, respond to,
and interact with the world that they encounter.
A focus on opportunity-seeking also encourages a
mindful learning perspective by focusing on the dynamic
and changeable properties of actions and the environment
(Ames, 1992; Dweck, 1996; Dweck & Leggett, 1988;
Langer, 1997; Nicholls, 1984). This perspective encour-
ages development of skills for mastering an area and invites
continued learning and adapting as situations change. In
academic settings (see Covington, 2000, for a review), for
instance, learning-oriented students are better and more
persistent at monitoring how well they are doing and at
adjusting their strategies to improve performance. They are
also more apt to view failure in terms of what it can teach
them about how to gain mastery in future attempts (rather
than as a reason to question overall ability). Affectively,
learning-oriented students are more likely than others to
experience pride and satisfaction (rather than relief) with
success, and they are not as likely to experience anxiety
with failure. Students who are less learning oriented tend to
do less well academically overall, and even in cases in
which they do well, the learning process is largely unpleas-
ant because efforts are driven by fear and doubts about
ability.
When a goal is interpreted as a challenge, it imparts
hope that opportunities providing some control are likely,
and it concentrates attention on accurately diagnosing de-
tails of the situation that will be instrumental to achieving
the goal (Covington, 2000). Almost paradoxically, then, an
optimistic outlook on a problem (i.e., seeing it as a chal-
lenge) may actually heighten the desire to make realistic
assessments of the steps required to solve the problem.
Here, optimism may actually produce increased realism
rather than encourage illusory thinking or wishful fantasies.
(See Oettingen, 1996, for evidence contrasting the benefi-
cial effects of optimistic aspirations and detrimental effects
of wishful fantasies.) In addition, envisioning details of the
goal-striving process promotes the creation of plans to
implement actions; and this type of planning has been
linked to much higher rates of goal attainment (Gollwitzer,
1999).
256
March 2001 American Psychologist
Reality Checks as the Key to
Avoiding Motivated Self-Deception
So how can we tell the difference between realistic opti-
mism and optimistic thinking that is likely to be unrealistic
or self-deceptive? The answer has to do with whether or not
we have our eyes open to reality (cf. Cramer, 1998). It
should come as no surprise that being realistic requires
monitoring experience to find out what is going on in the
environment. Realistic optimism relies on regular reality
checks to update assessments of progress, fine-tune one's
understanding of potential opportunities, refine causal
models of situations, and re-evaluate planned next steps.
This involves attention to both environmental and social
feedback about whether beliefs fall outside the range of
plausible (positive) possibilities.
Self-deception, on the other hand, is marked by the
lack of attempts to gain reality checks. Self-deception relies
on an exclusively confirmatory approach to information
processing and may even involve an active attempt to avoid
information inconsistent with desired beliefs (Baumeister,
1993, 1996; Greenwald, 1997; Gur & Sackeim, 1979;
Klein & Kunda, 1992; Kunda, 1990; Mele, 1997; Wright &
Schneider, 1999). There are numerous times when we
deceive ourselves using stories that we want to believe
(including wishful thinking) for which we actively avoid
reality checks. Consider the child who has a magic ring but
refrains from using its magic. Until tested, the child can
continue to believe in its powers.
The fuzzy boundaries of reality provide the gray areas
that cause us to wonder at times if we are being honest with
ourselves. Often we may have trouble determining whether
our ideas are within reasonable bounds. Even when we
suspect we might be deceiving ourselves or holding unfair
biases, we may not be in a position to fully "decontami-
nate" our views (Macrae, Bodenhausen, Milne, & Jetten,
1994; Wilson & Brekke, 1994). In addition, the more
powerful the motivation to believe something, the more
invested we become in convincing ourselves that our sto-
ries are within the realm of possibility (Mele, 1997). De-
viant behaviors, such as child molesting, are often justified
through cognitive distortions that seem ludicrous to most
people but that have become part of the offender's belief
system through chronic processes of motivated self-decep-
tion (Murphy, 1990; Wright & Schneider, 1999). These
processes, however, are distinct from realistic thinking in
that they are systematically driven to avoid information that
would provide insight into what the reality is.
Why Self-Deception Is Unrealistic
The strong motivation we all have for positive, ego-pro-
tected, and nondissonant self-views commonly leads to
self-deception in the form of self-serving biases (Baumeis-
ter, 1993, 1996; Dunning, 1999; Gur & Sackeim, 1979;
Klein & Kunda, 1992; Kunda, 1990; Liberman & Chaiken,
1992). Although self-serving biases are often characterized
as optimistic biases, they frequently are not candidates for
realistic optimism because the biases involve mental pro-
cesses that (a) are designed to distort or filter out awareness
of unwanted environmental information or (b) are insensi-
tive to the implications of fuzzy meaning (interpretive
latitude) and fuzzy knowledge (factual uncertainty).
Negative stereotyping, for instance, is likely to in-
volve self-deceptive processes in which judgments about
the group in question are based on insufficient and biased
information from the environment, replacing leniency and
appreciation with harsh criteria such as intolerance and
depreciation (Ditto & Lopez, 1993; Hilton & Von Hippel,
1996; Klein & Kunda, 1992, 1993; Kunda & Sinclair,
1999; Munro & Ditto, 1997). There is no acknowledgment
of the subjectivity of these evaluation criteria (fuzzy mean-
ing), and there is no consideration of the uncertainty in
knowing the causes of or intentions behind behaviors of the
stereotyped group's members (fuzzy knowledge). Al-
though an immediate benefit may be a feeling of superior-
ity, it comes at the very real expense of provoking inter-
group conflict that could escalate into violence or other
harmful consequences.
Self-deception is also common in the form of disso-
nance reduction, in which thought processes are commonly
used to eliminate negative or uncomfortable feelings about
oneself caused by behaviors that are in some way incon-
sistent with an existing attitude or belief (Festinger, 1957).
Some characterize these dissonance reduction techniques
as optimistic biases because they allow the person to regain
a positive view of himself or herself in the moment. Al-
though dissonance reduction techniques lead to positive
outcomes with respect to the immediate experience of the
individual, they often have negative implications for other
goals, attitudes, or beliefs. For instance, cigarette smokers
minimize the perceived self-relevance of the harmful ef-
fects of smoking to reduce their uncomfortable feelings
enough to enjoy a cigarette in the moment (Gibbons et al.,
1997; Steele, 1988). The rewarding immediate experience
of smoking comes to dominate by denying or ignoring the
long-term requirements for maintaining good health.
Deciding that events, such as particular health hazards
(e.g., lung cancer), are less likely to apply to us than to
similar others is equivalent to treating fuzzy knowledge as
though it were fuzzy meaning. Although we can use sub-
jective interpretation (i.e., fuzziness in possible meaning)
to choose how we will cope with exposure to risk, we
cannot use subjective interpretation to decide what our
level of risk exposure is. Risk exposure is determined by
causal factors that are largely independent of our thought
processes. To assess our risk, we need to gather relevant
information to try to reduce the fuzziness in our knowledge
about the factors causing the threat and their applicability
as a function of our previous experiences (or genetic pro-
pensities). It may be reasonable to hope that our chances of
an illness are relatively low or to aspire to low chances, but
not to expect that chances will be low unless we have
reliable evidence to that effect. Ignoring evidence to the
contrary is unrealistic because it represents an attempt to
dismiss reality.
March 2001 American Psychologist
257
Optimism: Unrealistic Expectation or
Adaptive Motivation?
The distinctions between hope, aspiration, and expectation
are critical for distinguishing realistic and unrealistic opti-
mism when predicting risk levels for specific events. Peo-
ple who are optimistic in the sense that they expect their
risk of some threat to be low without considerable support-
ing evidence are being unrealistic because they are not
acknowledging that they do not have enough information to
accurately make that assessment. Most often, even after
accruing relevant facts and data, there is insufficient infor-
mation available to isolate all of the causes of a threat or the
diagnosticity of possible causal factors.
Although no one likes to admit it, the most realistic
response in most cases is, "I don't really know my risk
level." (For related arguments and evidence in the context
of confidence judgments, see Schneider, 1995; Schneider &
Laurion, 1993.) Because the "I don't know" option is rare
in research on risk perceptions, people are seldom given the
opportunity to provide the most realistic response. The
fuzzier our knowledge of the causes of a threat, the less
realistic it is to have strong expectations of any kind. With
fuzzy knowledge, people who are optimistic in the sense
that they hope for a low risk are not being unrealistic,
provided that they are sensitive to their lack of knowledge
about their actual risk level. Coupled with opportunity-
seeking, we can move beyond hope to realistically aspire to
low risk by using whatever information we can obtain to try
to limit our exposure to the threat.
Often, approaches to measuring perceived risk make it
impossible to determine the extent to which responses
reflect relevant knowledge or actual efforts to reduce risks.
Moreover, positive responses are assumed to represent
expectations, rather than hopes or aspirations. But expec-
tations, hopes, and aspirations are qualitatively different
things. Those who base their responses on uninformed
positive expectations are probably not anxious to seek out
evidence about reality. It seems they would rather cogni-
tively discount their risks than behaviorally minimize them.
This type of response is self-deceptive and discourages
important preventive behaviors. In contrast, those who base
their responses on hopes and (especially) aspirations for
low risks are likely to be interested in learning more about
the reality of the threat and potential behaviors to further
reduce those risks.
The mobilizing effects of aspirations (the "I can do it"
attitude), as opposed to the unrealistic sense of control in
expectations (the "it will happen" attitude), may drive
many of the benefits associated with an optimistic outlook.
Even when people say, "I will beat this disease," they may
be talking about their determination to fight for survival
and not about an assumption that they are somehow im-
mune to the disease. In this way, what sounds like an
unrealistic expectation may actually be an adaptive moti-
vating force that helps the individual marshal his or her
resources to maximize chances of survival. Because fuzzy
knowledge makes it virtually impossible to know precisely
what our chances are, an optimistic motivational strategy,
focused on searching for opportunities to improve our
chances, may not be unrealistic after all.
Being Realistic Is Difficult When Goals
Conflict
Even in cases when we are motivated to seek opportunities
to improve our situation, being realistic is not always easy.
Opportunities that move us toward one goal may simulta-
neously move us away from another goal. This conflict
among goals is another powerful motivator that can pro-
mote distorted thinking and self-deception. For instance,
strategies for dissonance reduction often pit powerful im-
mediate goals such as mood maintenance (Isen, 1984) and
visceral urges (Loewenstein, 1996) against less salient
long-term goals such as health and social relationships.
With so much goal conflict in everyday life, it seems
that we are constantly in need of dissonance reduction. If
suddenly awarded a free hour, should we spend it on a
work project, in an exercise workout, or conversing with a
loved one (and then which one)? Balancing multiple goals
may not be easy, even for an optimist. But there are
methods available that do not involve the distortion of
reality or the denial of goal conflict. In fact, those who
adopt strategies that are likely to help satisfy, rather than
deny, multiple goals tend to be happier and healthier (Shel-
don & Emmons, 1995; Sheldon & Kasser, 1995; Valliant,
2000). An opportunity-seeking attitude may make it less
tempting to try to avoid those goal conflicts and may help
in generating creative solutions. Creativity, in turn, has
been related to higher levels of perceived comfort in han-
dling and resolving goal conflicts (Sheldon, 1995). In gen-
eral, using metacognitive processes to consciously consider
and establish priorities may be a critical first step in devel-
oping a workable and balanced set of goals that allow us to
reduce goal conflict and to prevent cognitive dissonance.
(For a related argument, see Baltes & Staudinger, 2000.)
Engagement and Feedback as Keys
to Realistic Optimism
Realistic optimism can confer both motivational and emo-
tional benefits (see Shapiro, Dorman, Burkey, & Welker,
1999, for an example). By making the goal-striving process
agreeable, opportunity-seeking promotes active engage-
ment in life tasks and continuing efforts toward goals (e.g.,
Cantor & Sanderson, 1999; Covington, 2000; Csikszent-
mihalyi, 1997; Higgins, 1996, 1999). Of course, those who
keep trying are more likely to succeed, especially if they set
attainable goals and routinely seek feedback to fine-tune
their performance and to recalibrate their goals (e.g., Neu-
bert, 1998).
Is an Optimistic Explanatory Style Realistic?
With realistic optimism motivating routine efforts toward
goal attainment, an optimistic explanatory style (Buchanan
& Seligman, 1995) may be justifiable. Those with an op-
timistic explanatory style tend to attribute unexpected bad
outcomes to external, unstable, and specific factors but tend
to attribute unexpected good outcomes to internal, stable,
258 March 2001 American Psychologist
and global factors. This asymmetry in attribution may be
reasonable for those who routinely put forward an earnest
effort in their endeavors and regularly experience some
success. If there is at least some control in the situation,
effort will typically bring about improvement in perfor-
mance through learning and practice (A. Newell & Rosen-
bloom, 1981); effort would certainly not be expected to be
systematically associated with declines in performance. On
the basis of experience, people who routinely put forth
effortor are routinely engaged or involvedmay come
to view this engagement propensity as one of their internal,
stable, global attributes and may have accrued substantial
evidence that their effort is most often the primary cause of
improvement (cf. Story & Dunning, 1998).
If an attempt does not yield success, it would seem
strange to conclude that not reaching the goal was caused
by one's efforts in pursuit of the goal. Assuming that a
person is and has been earnestly trying, the occurrence of
an undesirable outcome suggests that there is some external
factor that he or she has not previously encountered,
learned to reliably control, or learned to adjust to if control
is not feasible. Thus, an external attribution in the face of
an undesirable outcome makes sense if the focus is and has
been on discovering how to improve one's interactions
with the environment.
From another perspective, though, it seems that the
optimistic explanatory style is a recipe for chronic blaming,
which is one of the primary characteristics of cognitive
distortion and self-deception (e.g., Murphy, 1990). Blam-
ing has been linked to maladaptive consequences ranging
from health problems (Tennen & Affleck, 1990) to rela-
tionship difficulties (Fincham & Beach, 1999). Indeed,
some of the most obvious identifying features of the crim-
inal personality include an unwillingness to take responsi-
bility for self-initiated behaviors and a steadfast tendency
to blame circumstances and others for negative outcomes
related to their own transgressions (Samenow, 1989). Al-
though Seligman (1990, p. 52) cautioned against using an
optimistic explanatory style to avoid taking responsibility
for actions, he offered no criteria for distinguishing who
is being adaptively optimistic from who is responding
pathologically.
One of the key differences is likely to be the presence
or absence of active engagement in discovering and alter-
ing the malleable aspects of the environment. Realistic
optimism involves the search for environmental constraints
and opportunities to learn about new action-consequence
contingencies, whereas blaming relies on presumptions of
untested environmental constraints and on avoidance of
available information about action-consequence contin-
gencies. Criminals, for instance, blame others because they
are motivated to avoid considering their own culpability,
not because they are motivated to discern the consequences
of their behaviors in order to recalibrate for future success.
The Inductive Rationality of Realistic
Optimism
There is at least one model of rationality that implies that
the optimistic explanatory style is reasonable under certain
conditions, provided one is exerting effort toward a goal. A
Bayesian model of inductive rationality suggests that our
degree of belief about something should be adjusted up or
down as we gain evidence about the belief (see, e.g.,
Glymour, 1992, for a description of the Bayesian perspec-
tive). The more that evidence accrues in favor of the belief,
the stronger one's confidence should be about the truth of
the belief (although we can never be completely certain).
For the person who routinely experiences good outcomes in
some domain, the experience of a single bad outcome
should do little to alter confidence in his or her ability.
So, for instance, an accomplished student who re-
ceives a poor grade on a test has little reason to attribute the
poor grade to lack of scholastic ability. This is because the
vast majority of the tests he or she has taken still provide
a preponderance of evidence in favor of being a good
student. Because leniency, appreciation, and opportunity
seeking all contribute to an increase in the experience of
some degree of success, the realistic optimist may often be
in a position to rationally conclude that his or her occa-
sional failures are aberrations caused by some change in
condition.
When a bad outcome occurs on the heels of a series of
bad outcomes in some domain, an optimistic explanatory
style gradually becomes unrealistic as evidence contrary to
the "good performer" hypothesis mounts. Under these con-
tinuing unfavorable conditions, if an optimistic explanatory
style is maintained, it produces blaming. In these types of
situations, one can remain realistic but avoid a pessimistic
explanatory style by using the preponderance of negative
evidence as a signal to recalibrate or refocus goals to find
alternative avenues to success. A shorter man, for instance,
may learn from repeated experience that he does not have
the ability to master the slam dunk in basketball; instead, he
may more advantageously channel his efforts into practic-
ing shots from outside.
Thus, an optimistic explanatory style can be associ-
ated with realistic responding, but only if the response style
is accompanied by active engagement in establishing
reachable goals and routine search of the environment for
feedback to improve the effectiveness of efforts. This feed-
back is especially useful for assessing whether the amount
of effort exerted feels like it is worth the judged degree of
success. In this way, reality checks also provide informa-
tion needed to choose how to channel one's energies into
efforts that yield more satisfying successes (e.g., Aspinwall
& Richter, 1999).
Engagement May Be More Realistic Than
Either Internal or External Attributions
The immense attribution literature has promoted what, in
essence, may be an unrealistic dichotomy between internal
and external causes. Research participants are often asked
to decide whether outcomes are primarily caused either by
something about the individual or by something about the
environment. But outcomes are almost always denned by
the interaction between the individual and the environment.
What it means, for instance, to successfully take a drink
depends on whether one has a drinking vessel, or is orbiting
March 2001 American Psychologist
259
the earth, or is paralyzed, or is riding Whitewater rapids, et
cetera. A causal model can be realistic only to the extent
that it captures the essential interdependence between the
individual's behavior and environmental constraints (see
also DeGrandpre, 2000; Gibson, 1979; Gigerenzer, 2000;
Gigerenzer, Todd, & the ABC Research Group, 1999;
Simon, 1981).
As we have just seen, chronic blaming is an unwill-
ingness to consider the individual (i.e., oneself) in the
causal model of outcomes. By representing only external
factors as possible causes of events, the essential interplay
between the individual and the environment is lost. Be-
cause this causal model of the world is chronically missing
one of the two essential components, it cannot accurately
capture the actual state of affairs.
What if the causal model of the world were chroni-
cally missing the environmental component rather than the
role of the individual? In this case, a person would habit-
ually ignore the environment and look for explanations of
outcomes only in terms of his or her own ability. The result
is a rigid perspective that presumes an individual's perfor-
mance should be invariant across situations. This causal
model of the world is recognizable as what Dweck (1996)
called an implicit entity theory, wherein people assume that
an individual's abilities are fixed or invariant over time and
across situations. The dynamic features of the environment
are not considered important influences on performance.
Hence, a failure or bad outcome indicates incompetence in
the domain.
This exclusive focus on the individual is unrealistic
because it fails to acknowledge the context-dependence of
behavior, and it ignores the potential for changes in ability
to gradually develop through practice. The view leads to
extreme judgments (e.g., "I am great/lousy at this") based
on only one or a few performances (which in some cases is
inconsistent with principles of Bayesian rationality). A
rigid focus on the individual also eliminates many impor-
tant methods for meaningfully assessing the success of
interactions. Valuable benchmarks for performance, such
as improvements over time or adaptations to changing
conditions, may not be recognized because they are not
lasting features of the individual. As a consequence, an
entity perspective discourages goals focused on practice or
on achieving one's personal best. Instead, it promotes com-
petitiveness by limiting options for assessing performance
to comparisons with the performance of others (i.e., com-
parisons of one's own fixed ability to the fixed abilities of
others). Hence, outperforming others (an inherently antag-
onistic goal) becomes the only avenue for feeling good
about one's own ability (Covington, 2000; Skaalvik, 1997;
Thorkildsen & Nicholls, 1998).
Aspiring to Find Effective
Action-Consequence Contingencies
The current description of realistic optimism implies a
focus on active engagement, emphasizing the potential of
the individual given the constraints imposed by the envi-
ronment. Both reality checks and opportunity-seeking pro-
mote active engagement as a means to discover controlla-
ble aspects of the situation. This search for control may
lead to what appears to be overconfidence in judgments of
controllability. As mentioned earlier, however, whether
response measures assess expectations (i.e., predictions
based on fixed beliefs) or aspirations (i.e., hopes based on
motivation) is often difficult to discern.
Regardless of the measurement issue, a bias in favor
of anticipating controllability does not necessarily reflect
misplaced overconfidence. In fact, the bias may be more
adaptiveand arguably more rationalthan a neutral po-
sition. In signal detection terms (see, e.g., Swets, Dawes, &
Monahan, 2000), it may be less costly to experience antic-
ipatory errors that are false alarms (searching for control
when there is none) than misses (not searching for control
when it is available). Without perfect knowledge, we can-
not help but make errors in our predictions. Given this, it
may be optimal to bias our predictions in favor of antici-
pating some control. This seems especially likely given that
control is not an all-or-none phenomenon; those who
search for control will be more likely to discover at least
some aspect of the situation that is amenable to change.
Moreover, the fuzzy nature of reality may allow us to
exercise more control over our experiences than is typically
acknowledged. Consider a person who expects good things
to happen. At first glance, this seems like wishful thinking
about events that are out of the person's control. In some
cases, that might be what it is. But for someone who has a
consistent history of good experiences, it seems reasonable
(and may be inductively rational) to expect that good
experiences will continue, just as we all expect the sun to
continue to rise every morning. (See Constant, 1999, for an
interesting Bayesian analysis of the relationship between
reliable experiences and rational beliefs.)
Given this, a person would be realistic in his or her
optimism with a consistent history of (a) experiences that
most everyone would agree qualified as good experiences,
(b) experiences that commonly had a positive subjective
meaning due to interpretive processes such as leniency and
appreciation, or (c) experiences that had been improved by
the individual through opportunity-seeking. The person has
at least some control over Criteria b and c. Because of the
self-fulfilling prophecies enabled by Criteria b and c, the
person may also have some impact on Criterion a. In this
sense, each of us can be considered an active player in the
quality of our experiences, with at least partial control of
whether good things happen. Realistically, having a good
attitude is likely to pay off.
Toward a Realistically Optimistic
Science of Psychology
The science of psychology shapes how we come to under-
stand mental and behavioral processes. We can take ad-
vantage of the benefits of realistic optimism to inject psy-
chology with a positive and energizing outlook, without
blinding ourselves to human flaws. Psychological science
can take a lenient perspective in understanding human
mistakes and frailties, cultivate appreciation of human
strengths and achievements, and actively create opportuni-
ties for improving people's life experiences.
260 March 2001 American Psychologist
In our attempts to identify what it means to be a
well-adapted individual, we will need to explore the nature
of human reality. Understanding the different implications
of fuzzy meaning and fuzzy knowledge may help us to
better predict the impact of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors
under a variety of constraints. Within our reality, we may
often be able to discover a positive perspective on our
situationnot a distortion or illusion, but a legitimate
evaluation, within reasonable limits of what we do and do
not know about our realitythat helps us to achieve peace
of mind, appreciation for our experiences, and mobilization
for future endeavors. This perspective invites emotions
such as hope, pride, curiosity, and enthusiasm, which are
likely to be powerful contributors to the essence of mean-
ing, as well as powerful motivators (Caffray & Schneider,
2000; Lea & Webley, 1997; Snyder, 2000).
We each have the opportunity to guide the direction of
our own lives and subjective experiences, both in our
day-to-day choices and in our long-term plans. We are also
capable of fooling ourselves into believing things that are
unlikely based on the information that we could have if we
chose to access it. The illusion of the good life is likely to
break down for those who lull themselves into compla-
cency with self-deceptive beliefs, but the illusion is likely
to become reality for those who are optimistic within the
fuzzy boundaries established by active engagement in life.
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