In practice, being reasonably optimistic has only minor inconvenience, while being pessimistic tends to be stressful, socially disadvantageous and self-fulfilling.
When shit happens, the optimist deals with it, ignoring it the rest of the time.
The pessimist will have to deal with it anyway but paying the price for a much longer time trying to avoid or “prepare for ” it.
Pessimism can also simply mean you say no to a lot of stupid things by default, and only adopt new ideas that pass a little gauntlet of validity.
That can be an efficiency win through many different mechanisms.
You can also be pessimistic and optimistic at the same time in different contexts or scales. I pessimistically assume every sales pitch is something better for the salesman than for me. I optimistically think that humanity is on the whole more good than bad, and more progressing than not.
> The pessimist will have to deal with it anyway but paying the price for a much longer time trying to avoid or “prepare for ” it.
That's the nature of investment without perfect information. It's identical to insurance.
Also, the abstract covered "unrealistic optimism" but didn't scrape "unrealistic pessimism." Which, clearly can be a factor, the same way you can easily be convinced to overpay for insurance in some situations.
Pessimism doesn't have to mean that you spend a lot of time worrying and preparing for things.
I lean towards pessimism; generally expecting negative outcomes. I don't spend much time worrying about things that can't be influenced, though. It's certainly not mentally healthy in many ways, but I don't experience much stress because of it.
Stoics would say the opposite. Being prepared for (but not ruminating on) a bad outcome makes dealing with it far, far easier than expecting it to go well and being surprised.
That only makes sense of optimism doesn't affect important choices.
Which of course it does. As a lot of crypto investors who lost everything will tell you.
Even more important is something like climate change. Low-cognitive optimists are far more likely to say "It'll be fine" than the high-cognitive scientists who are running around screaming with their hair on fire metaphorically, before everyone's hair starts burning literally.
When shit happens, the optimist deals with it, ignoring it the rest of the time.
The pessimist will have to deal with it anyway but paying the price for a much longer time trying to avoid or “prepare for ” it.