Unrealistic Optimism In Animal Farm

ANIMAL FARM - TERM PROJECT

Unrealistic Optimism is a cognitive bias that causes a person to believe that they are less likely to experience a negative and more likely to experience a positive event compared to others.

There are four factors that cause people to have unrealistic optimism: Their desired end state, their cognitive mechanisms, the information they have about themselves versus others and overall mood. Studies show that most humans are disposed to unrealistic optimism. Illusory optimism increases our vulnerability. This cognitive bias prevents people from taking precautionary measures in life, especially regarding health conditions.

Unrealistic optimism in "Animal Farm" particularly appears in chapter 2 and chapter 3.When the animals overthrow the human reign in the farm, not only they become extremely joyful but also unrealistically optimist. In chapter 2, page 22,Orwell describes the situation: "Yes, it was theirs-everything that they could see was theirs! In the

Learned helplessness was discovered by American psychologist Martin Seligman in the late 1960s. While managing experimental research on classical conditioning, Seligman accidentally found out that dogs that had received inevitable electric shocks could not take action in next situations—even those in which escape was possible—whereas dogs that had not received the inevitable shocks immediately took action in next situations. The experiment was repeated with human subjects (using loud noise as opposed to electric shocks), giving similar consequences. Seligman devised learned helplessness to define this cognitive bias.

Depression, anxiety, shyness and loneliness can all be intensified by learned helplessness. For instance, a young man who feels timid in social situations may begin to feel that there is nothing he can do to get over his