Why young children are hyper-optimistic

Brain Explorer - Young children are more optimistic than adolescents, which stems from not learning enough from bad outcomes, finds a new study by UCL researchers. While people tend to have an optimism bias at any age, the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General study reports that this is particularly true among children, and declines as they grow up into adolescence. As they grow older, children learn more from negative outcomes, lose their hyper-optimism, and become more realistic. Lead author of the study, Johanna Habicht ( Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry & Ageing Research and Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology), said: "We asked our study participants to play a game to gather treasures from different planets. They had to learn how good these planets were and tell us how much they will earn. "We found that children were much more optimistic than the adolescents. All groups of young people had an optimism bias, as they over-estimated how much they will earn, but the younger children were particularly hyper-optimistic, and thought they would get the most treasures." The study involved 108 participants: children aged 8-9 and adolescents aged 12-13 and 16-17.