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I spotted that as well. But the rest of the study doesn’t mix them. They define realists as people who predicted their future finances correctly, optimists as p
by kolinko 3y ago
I spotted that as well. But the rest of the study doesn’t mix them. They define realists as people who predicted their future finances correctly, optimists as people who missed (so eg said no change where the reality was their finances got worse) and pessimists as people who missed the other way.
- DennisP 3y agoSo they define pessimists as people who did better than they expected? I'm not convinced this means pessimists are smarter. Maybe it just means that smarter people are more likely to surprise themselves by how well they perform. If someone expects great outcomes, it doesn't make them pessimists if they do even better than that. Oxford's first definition of "pessimist" is "a person who tends to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen," which is not at all what the study looks at.