Optimism and pessimism are not merely fleeting sentiments or passing moods. They’re forces that tilt our choices, individually and collectively.

How, then, are our beliefs about the future and our decision-making connected? To explore this, we spoke with Kerstin Preuschoff and Ewa Lombard, two researchers from LUCID (Laboratory for Uncertainty, Collective Intelligence and Decision-Making) whose work examines how our minds construct the future, how uncertainty alters our choices, and why optimism and pessimism matter.

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Casper: Most people in rich, ageing nations are pessimists about the future – they are more likely to believe that society is moving in the wrong direction, and that their descendants will be worse off than themselves. It’s the opposite picture in more youthful, but less wealthy nations, where people tend to have a brighter outlook.

To what extent are optimism and agency connected – on both the personal and collective levels?

Kerstin: I don’t believe optimism and agency are necessarily correlated – you can have a sense of control over your future regardless of whether you’re optimistic or pessimistic about outcomes. However, optimism likely plays a stronger role in translating agency into action.

Both optimism and pessimism reflect a belief that we can predict future outcomes. But here’s the crucial difference: optimism tends to be more motivating because it creates an incentive structure that encourages action. When people believe a positive outcome is achievable, they’re more likely to initiate tasks and invest effort. Pessimists, conversely, may possess agency – an understanding that their actions could influence the future – but lack the motivational drive to act on it. If you believe things will turn out poorly regardless, why start?

In this sense, agency might emerge as a consequence of optimism rather than the other way around. When we’re optimistic, we’re more inclined to take action, and through that action, we experience our capacity to shape outcomes – which reinforces our sense of agency. It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.

Ewa: On the collective level, societal pessimism cannot be viewed separately from its political and economic context. In the U.S. and Europe, sentiment shocks – waves of undue optimism or pessimism – account for a significant portion of business cycle fluctuations, and collective pessimism rises during economic downturns. The fact that collective optimism is often higher in countries with projected economic improvement suggests that expectations for future growth, not just current conditions, drive collective optimism.

Another factor relates to collective beliefs about the past, the kind of national mythology that creates a lens or a reference point against which people compare their current situation and future outlook. For instance, experimental research in France shows that highlighting negative collective memories of the French past leads to more negative expectations for France’s future – especially among those who perceive current society as disintegrated.

And let’s face it – in some cultures, it is considered educated to maintain a cynical attitude and nag, while being optimistic is considered silly…

Casper: Is pessimism necessarily such a bad thing? Can’t pessimism and a sense of the future being full of threats – ones that we must act in order to solve – be just as motivating for us?

Ewa: Thanks for this question, it is important to talk about pessimism, too! Psychological studies show that a type of pessimism called defensive pessimism is actually good for decision-making in the sense that it motivates preparation and insurance against what can go wrong. Unlike regular pessimism (which leads to avoidance and the “pessimism trap”), defensive pessimism actually involves expecting negative outcomes but still taking action, anticipating obstacles and planning for them in advance.

The key distinction is that defensive pessimists have agency – they believe their actions matter and can influence outcomes – but they set low expectations as a psychological strategy. These are the people who prefer to imagine worst-case scenarios so that they feel less disappointed if things go poorly and feel pleasantly surprised when things go well! At the same time, it is a defensive strategy that reduces anxiety about uncertainty and motivates them to plan more carefully. This can be a useful attitude in some contexts. For example, defensive pessimists adopted more precautionary health behaviors (wearing a mask, social distancing) during the COVID-19 pandemic and had fewer positive COVID-19 results.

So, to summarise: Someone with high agency and low optimism expects their actions to have impact, but doesn’t expect positive outcomes. This might look like determined pessimism or defensive preparation.

Someone with high optimism and low agency expects good things but doesn’t expect to cause them. This can manifest as passive waiting or magical thinking.

Someone with hope but low expectations maintains emotional openness to positive outcomes while rationally expecting otherwise. This can be adaptive – protecting motivation without setting yourself up for crushing disappointment.

The healthiest relationship with the future might involve calibrated expectations (realistic optimism), strong beliefs about your capacity to influence outcomes (agency), while maintaining enough hope to stay motivated and open to possibility.

Kerstin: I was thinking along similar lines as Ewa; pessimism, in its typical form, is more likely to generate anxiety and inaction, potentially leading to depression over time. This isn’t necessarily a good thing for individuals or society. It is likely what many people in high-income countries experience today. These “classic” pessimists are statistically more likely to experience positive surprises – reality often exceeds their low expectations. So, if you like positive surprises, be a pessimist!

The problem is that pessimists tend to attribute these successes to external factors like luck rather than their own capabilities. This prevents them from building confidence or learning from success. Optimists face the opposite problem – they experience more negative surprises when reality falls short of expectations, but they attribute successes to internal, stable factors like skill and ability, which builds resilience.

And then there is the “defensive pessimism” that Ewa already mentioned. Psychologically and neurologically speaking, running through and actively planning for negative scenarios is a very powerful form of learning useful behaviours without actually having to experience these negative scenarios.

In the context of collective decision-making, as well as forecasting and foresight, cognitive diversity matters enormously. Having (defensive) pessimists in the mix is valuable – they’re more likely to identify risks, consider negative scenarios, and spot potential pitfalls that optimists might overlook. Note that excessive optimism is associated with lower cognitive ability and poorer decision-making. Those highest in cognitive ability tend to be more realistic and even pessimistic in their expectations – they’re better at overriding the automatic optimistic bias when making important decisions.

Casper: Gender is one of the variables that seem to impact our outlook the most: Women think about their own future more than men do, men are more optimistic about the wellbeing of their descendants than women, and men are also more hopeful about the future in general.

Apart from socioeconomic and cultural factors – income, norms, gender roles – are there neurological or psychological factors that help explain the gap as well?

Kerstin: Yes, there are neurological and psychological differences in how men and women perceive relationships, risk, and future outcomes that align with these findings. However, we face a fundamental attribution challenge: it’s extremely difficult to disentangle what’s innate from what’s learned, because virtually all societies share similar gender role structures that position women as primary guardians of family emotional and social wellbeing.

That said, we do see some consistent patterns in the research. Studies on temporal discounting – how much people devalue future rewards compared to immediate ones – generally show that men discount the future more steeply than women, though this varies by context. Men tend to be more present-focused in their decision-making, which might paradoxically contribute to their greater optimism: If you’re less focused on carefully weighing future risks and uncertainties, you may feel more hopeful about how things will turn out.

Ewa: Another factor that may also be at play here is concern for the environment and climate change which we know is higher among women. This pattern holds across many countries and persists even after accounting for gender egalitarian attitudes. Whether this is rooted in biology is another question but being more aware of the increasingly devastating consequences of climate change can clearly make you less optimistic about the quality of life of your descendents.

Delegating our current problems to future generations is often justified by assumptions about future technological progress or increased wealth, and studies suggest that men tend to have slightly more favourable attitudes toward technology and technological progress than women. In short, we can speculate that women are more pro-environmental and see climate change as the major factor that will make the lives of future generations more difficult, while men are more likely to be techno-optimists and are generally less concerned about climate.

Kerstin: There’s also a fundamental difference in social cognition: men tend to think hierarchically about people and their place in society and collectives, while women are more inclined toward networks (of dyadic relationships) and relational thinking. This could help explain why women think more about their own future and feel greater responsibility for descendants – they’re cognitively mapping out interconnected webs of relationships and dependencies, which naturally includes more worry and contingency planning. Men, thinking more in terms of status and position, may be more optimistic because they’re focused on their trajectory within a hierarchy rather than the complex relational outcomes.

Casper: People tend to be more hopeful and optimistic about their own personal future than that of society – something that’s known as personal exemption fallacy or optimism gap. Why do we think like this – and is it a good thing, considering how optimism can translate into agency?

Kerstin: This phenomenon could operate through several interconnected psychological mechanisms.

First, there’s a fundamental asymmetry in perceived control: we genuinely have more influence over our personal circumstances than over societal trends. You can change your career or move cities, but you can’t personally solve climate change or fix democratic institutions. This creates a rational basis for differential optimism.

The feeling of control is also closely linked to uncertainty and risk aversion. Generally speaking, societal trends are likely perceived as less certain than personal circumstances. As most people are averse to risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity they will perceive the societal fate as less favorable.

As for the cognitive biases at play, the personal exemption fallacy is closely related to overconfidence – our tendency to believe we perform better compared to others than we actually do. When we think about society’s future, we’re thinking about “average people” facing challenges. But we don’t see ourselves as average. This illusory superiority means we think: “Yes, society faces problems, but I’m better positioned, more capable, and smarter than most, so I’ll navigate successfully.”

There could also be a psychological protection mechanism at work. Believing “I’ll be fine” while acknowledging societal challenges allows us to function without paralysing anxiety. It’s adaptive for individual mental health – we can take action in our own lives while still recognising that broader problems exist.

Now, the optimism gap may result in a dangerous collective action problem: If everyone thinks “I’ll be fine” even as society declines, who will take responsibility for fixing societal problems? The current increasing political disengagement (precisely when collective action is most needed) might be a result of this.

Recent research shows this has real consequences: people who are societally pessimistic are less likely to have children, suggesting the gap affects fundamental life decisions. This adds an interesting new hypothesis to explain the decline in reproduction in high-income countries.

An interesting question to explore is whether this gap is stronger in optimists than in pessimists. This distinction would tell us a lot about the underlying psychology.

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