Wishful thinking

Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence or rationality.

Studies have consistently shown that holding all else equal, subjects will predict positive outcomes to be more likely than negative outcomes. See positive outcome bias.

Prominent examples of wishful thinking include:

• Economist Irving Fisher said that "stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau" a few weeks before Stock Market Crash of 1929, which was followed by the Great Depression.
• British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain informed the public that the 1938 Munich Agreement guaranteed "peace in our time".
• Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's plan for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
• President John F. Kennedy believed that, if overpowered by Cuban forces, the CIA-backed rebels could "escape destruction by melting into the countryside" in the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

As a logical fallacy

In addition to being a cognitive bias and a poor way of making decisions, wishful thinking can also be a specific logical fallacy in an argument when it is assumed that because we wish something to be true or false that it is actually true or false. This fallacy has the form "I wish that P is true/false, therefore P is true/false."^[1]

For example:

The teacher gave us a difficult exam! We shouldn't have to be subjected to such stress under the course of our education.

It may be that it was uncomfortable, but that does not mean that uncomfortable things should always be avoided. Wishful thinking underlies appeals to emotion, and is a red herring.

Some atheists argue that much of theology, particularly arguments for the existence of God, is based on wishful thinking because it takes the desired outcome (that a god or gods exist) and tries to prove it on the basis of a premise through reasoning which can be analysed as fallacious, but which may nevertheless be wished "true" in the mind of the believer. Some theologians argue that it is actually atheism which is the product of wishful thinking, in that atheists may not want to believe in any gods or may not want there to be any gods. Both of these arguments would better be described as confirmation bias. Also, pseudoscience is often generated and maintained by wishful thinking about human abilities.

"Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable ... and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief. Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct some thing to take its place." Julian Huxley

Related fallacies are the Negative proof and Argument from ignorance fallacies ("It hasn't been proved false, so it must be true." and vice versa). For instance, a believer in UFOs may accept that most UFO photos are faked, but claim that the ones that haven't been debunked must be considered genuine.

See also

Self-serving bias and choice-supportive bias may be directly resulting cognitive biases; see the list of cognitive biases for more. Because of the emotional consequences of wishful thinking, emotional memory is also relevant. Wishful thinking also plays a part in groupthink, which concerns group decision making.

External links

• A study demonstrating wishful thinking in memory
• Examples of Wishful Thinking @ Humbug! Online.