Caring for Others leads People to be Vicariously Optimistic

What is it about?

We think of optimism as something self-centred: I expect bad things happening to others, not me. Yet, research also tells us that we do not only care about the future outcomes of ourselves, but also those of others, even strangers. We also know that people have the capability to experience vicarious emotions in response to other people’s successes and misfortunes. So maybe optimism could also extend to others? To find out, we examined if people show vicarious optimism in learning about the future of friends and strangers. And indeed, testing more than 1000 people, we find that the more people care about another person, the more vicarious optimism they show in learning about the future of that person.

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Why is it important?

But does vicarious optimism have any implications in real life? We thought that just like optimism for the self often provides motivation to do something, vicarious optimism might provide the hope that supports helping. Feeling that there is hope for another person’s future might fuel people’s motivation to help them now. And, indeed, we discovered that people who show vicarious optimism for a stranger were willing to donate almost three times as much money to a charity supporting people similar to that stranger compared to people who were pessimistic about the future of that stranger.

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