Unrealistic Optimism

We would like to share a recent article on student self-evaluations entitled, "Unrealistic Optimism in the Pursuit of Academic Success," by Lewine and Sommers (2016). This study examines the effect of offering extra credit for students’ accurate prediction (self-accuracy) of their performance on four exams in two semester-long classes on Personality. The authors attempted to make self awareness of a focal point of each course and student accuracy was predicted over four exams during a single semester.

This quantitative analysis revealed that a large proportion of students were unrealistically optimistic and this inflated confidence was actually related to poorer academic performance. This is consistent with findings in the literature (Dunning et. al, 2004). Additionally, despite the use of extra credit in this study, implementing extra credit does not align with research based effective teaching practices (Wilson, 2002). There were a small group of students that systematically improved accuracy on their self-evaluations, particularly students with the highest final exam performance. In contrast to these students, the students who continued to predict with less accuracy ended the semester with poorer exam scores than at the beginning.

The authors conclude by citing the importance of further exploration and recommend cognitive style and storytelling as distinct paradigms that can be integrated to better understand unrealistic optimism in the classroom.

Lewine, R., & Sommers, A. A. (2016). Unrealistic Optimism in the Pursuit of Academic Success. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 10(2), 4.

https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1632&context=ij-sotl