Media intervention program for reducing unrealistic optimism bias: The link between unrealistic optimism, well-being, and health.
Unrealistic optimism is the tendency to perceive oneself as safer than others in situations that equally threaten everybody. By reducing fear, this bias boosts one's well-being; however, it is also a deterrent to one's health. Three experiments were run in a mixed-design on 1831 participants to eliminate unrealistic optimism (measured by two items-probability of COVID-19 infection for oneself and for others; within-subjects) toward the probability of COVID-19 infection via articles/videos. A between-subject factor was created by manipulation. Ostensibly, daily newspaper articles describing other people diligently following medical recommendations (experiment 1) and videos showing people who…
Research on Unrealistic Optimism among HoReCa Workers as a Possible Future Hotspot of Infections
As we are facing a new surge of the highly infectious delta variant of COVID-19, there is an urgent need for research to reduce the harm before this next wave hits. In the present paper, we present data that is alarming. We have found that HoReCa (hotels, restaurants, and catering services) workers, who are highly exposed to many new social interactions in close contact, present an unrealistic optimism (UO) bias: they perceive themselves as less at risk to this virus in comparison to others. From the literature, we already know that individuals holding this view are less involved in preventive actions and present more risky behaviors. In the face of the delta variant, this leads to the conc…