Consequences of comparative optimism for controllable health and safety risks: A critical re-appraisal and a research agenda

Most people believe that they are less at risk for controllable health and safety hazards than average or even than most others. Most researchers assume that this comparative optimism is based on a misperception of one’s own risks and that it may have important consequences in the domain of health and safety behaviour. However, studies on the consequences of unrealistic optimism have typically yielded inconsistent results. The lack of converging evidence for a relationship between comparative optimism and health behaviour has often been attributed to the use of suboptimal research strategies or to the inadequate interpretation of correlational data. Alternatively, it has been interpreted to show the absence of any such relationship. Three lines of evidence cast doubt on either one of these alternatives. First, recent findings, partly from the authors’ own research, suggest that it is other people’s risks that are being misperceived rather than one’s own risks. Second, the ubiquitous nature of social comparison processes in social perception suggests that it is unlikely that comparative risk perception should be irrelevant to people’s instrumental behaviour. Third, a juxtaposition of attitudinal models of health behavior and research on comparative optimism shows that the latter tradition uses an unduly impoverished approach towards risk perception. Together, these elements require (a) thoroughly re-thinking of the potential consequences of comparative optimism in the domain of health and risk behaviour, (b) re-evaluating studies aiming at unravelling these consequences and studies aiming at identifying effective de-biasing strategies or analysing their desirability in the first place, and (c) re-orienting the scope of studies aiming at examining the relationship between comparative optimism and health and safety behaviour. The present contribution aims at initiating these processes by underbuilding each of the three lines of reasoning described above and by systematically examining their implications for understanding the relationship between health and safety behaviour and comparative optimism.status: publishe