The research intends to manipulate perceived experience and how to evaluate the results of the manipulation based on self and other people’s likely judgments based on the event controllability and the imagination of future events.
The researcher tested the hypothesis regarding the perceived psychological functioning, which assumes that imaginations increase chances of judging the likeliness of an occurrence of an adverse event or phenomenon in the future due to personal experiences. Therefore, the hypothesis provides an insight into why individuals in society are comparatively optimistic.
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The researcher selected a study sample of 99 respondents from diverse fields of study. The sample comprised of 50 females and 46 males, all of aged 20.6 on average. The researcher organized the everyday events based on higher, moderate, and lower controllability and the respondents requested to provide honest and accurate information. He presented instructions to them and following immediately with manipulation. The respondents replied based on their experiences as they complete the questionnaires in-situ based on a 7-point rating scale. The experiences were shortly followed by mood questions and then likelihood questions that expected answers about the possibility of an event occurring in the future. Notably, the likelihood questions were based on an 11-point rating scale that majorly anchored on either impossible or extremely likely. The impossible was denoted by a zero (0) while the latter represented by 10 (Harris, 2007). Finally, control questions followed to express how the respondent could likely experience every single event in the future.
The respondents in higher perceived experience affirmatively ascertained that perceived experience impacts likelihood judgments of self and others frequently as compared to those in the lower perceived experience status. The author argues that individuals often find it easier to remember past occurrences, which subjected them to experience a given condition. The research indicates that the ratings reduced among individuals in higher perceived conditions upon manipulation. This implies that a person’s personal experiences regarding an occurrence usually reduce perceived control over the same condition as evident in the experimental results of the study. Therefore, the findings ascertain the underlying hypothesis of the research, which claims that experience is a determinant of the likelihood. This is because it increases the ease with which an individual recalls the past events and imagines possible circumstances where the occurrence could repeat itself.
Additionally, the author provides insights on how perceived experience increases the risk of likelihood ratings among people and self. For example, he provides evidence by citing that past experiences reinforce perceptions that support the likelihood among the selected group. Therefore, the research is valid as regards its ability to explain both cognitive and motivational concepts that increase people’s judgmental risks. For instance, he posits that manipulation can increase due to the perceived frequency of occurrences; hence, increasing self and other’s perceptions regarding vulnerability to the event. For example, experiences can determine future motivations, impacts on self-esteem, and reduced anxiety. Notably, it is the self-risk judgments that increase likelihood judgments (Harris, 2007). Furthermore, many mediating mechanisms increase the perceptions of how experience influences comparative optimism. For example, the mechanisms indeed reduce perceived control whilst increasing imagination about the event. Therefore, this piece of evidence supports imagination other than control. This implies that it is imagination that mediates the consequences of experience as ascertained in an electrocution incident that proved self-risk perceptions to be true.
In my perspective, the research was conducted scientifically and is recommended for the global community. This is because the assessment methods aligned with optimistic bias. However, the research should be improved to depict how the event and individual difference moderators resulting from the assessment influence others’ risk as regards the findings in this context. Additionally, the study should be repeated in the future since it is ambiguous in the manner in which it assesses how experience impacts self-likelihood. Therefore, is should incorporate indirect methods of assessment instead of solely relying on comparative likelihood. In this regard, future research should include an examination of how experiences influence mental simulations that individuals construct based on their situations and those of the others. Such recommendations are necessary because the current research fails to support both moderating and mediating role for perceived control following an experience of an event. Therefore, the research should determine the various variables that relate the experience to others’ risks in terms of moderation.
Finally, the research is comprehensive and provides better insights into the various implications regarding optimistic bias. For instance, it expresses how optimism about events results in the likelihoods of adverse events occurring in the future. The comparative analysis as depicted in the research succinctly presents the possibility of occurrence of events like colon cancer, divorce, and winning tickets in the future. Consequently, the research objective informs scholars of how the probabilities increase the severity associated with the impacts (Watson, 2014). Hence, it increases knowledge that is based on victimization regarding risk factors and objective self-risks. In a nutshell, we can appreciate the fact that experience affects perceived controllable events.
References
Harris. P. (2007). The impact of perceived experience on likelihood judgments for self and others: An experimental approach. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 141–151. Sheffield: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Watson, D. (2014). Personality Assessment.
