Optimism Bias

29/08/2025 10 min
Optimism Bias

Listen "Optimism Bias"

Episode Synopsis

Thing about humans is, we like to look on the bright side of life. Without optimism, we'd not have evolved out of the trees in the first place.  Our species has optimism bias. But we're all different, and some of us are a little bit too wired to be over-optimistic - and vice versa. This has big impacts for the messages we see about climate change. In this MICRO episode, a snippet of my forthcoming chat with Professor Geoff Beattie. What did he learn when he put optimistic and pessimistic people in an eye tracker and got them to read bits of text about the state of the planet? OWL NOISE: about Geoff's brilliant work on optimism here. Please do consider chipping in a couple of quid over at http://www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. And a written review would be ace. Please thank you please. The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. The show is over on Instagram at @yourbrainonclimate. YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.