Optimistic bias

The optimistic bias trend of thinking involves the faulty belief that negative events are less likely to happen to optimists, or themselves, that other people.  The optimistic bias states that optimists may not take important health and medical precautions and may not cooperate fully with medical treatment, which could be health damaging or even fatal.  One reason why some people believe that an optimistic bias exists is because optimists have reported coping better with the life threatening and fatal diseases, like HIV, AIDS, and cancer, that those who are not optimistic.

Because optimists dealing with severe and fatal diseases are still able to remain optimistic makes some people speculative over a possible optimistic bias trend existing.  Some researchers speculate that optimists may be in denial of their physical state, and fear that a false sense of security is given to optimists.  In turn, a fear exists that certain steps of recovery are not given attention to by optimists because of the false sense of security.

Positive thing decreases the possibility of an optimistic bias ever exiting and aids in optimist’ precautionary health efforts.  Because positive thinkers know that they have a purpose in life and have an family that loves them, they are more likely to do what they have to do, health wise, to battle sever illnesses.  The reliance of the power of God is also very important and helps give people strength to get through severe illnesses.

Positive thinking increases optimism to a point, but also prevents one from being overly optimistic, as well,  Imagine if you will, a bell curve, with optimism as the vertical axis and positive thinking on the horizontal axis.  Both optimism and positive thinking will increase together until a certain point, when optimism will start to decrease as positive thinking continues to increase, which would be the downward slope of the bell curve.  The optimal part of the bell curve is where optimism and positive thinking are equally high, but optimism will not continue to increase as positive thinking increases, which would not allow an optimistic bias to occur.