We all like to think of ourselves as rational creatures who
smartly prepare for the worst. We watch our back, weigh the odds
and pack an umbrella when the skies look threatening. But
although we take such precautions, we generally expect things to
turn out pretty well — often better than they actually do. The
belief that the future will probably be much better than the
past and present is known as the optimism bias, and most of us
have this tendency to overestimate the likelihood of good events
happening to us and underestimate the likelihood that bad events
will come crashing down. Take marriage, for example. In the
Western world, divorce rates are higher than 40 percent: Two out
of five marriages end in divorce. But newlyweds estimate their
own likelihood of divorce at zero. Why is optimism about our
personal future so resilient? It starts with what may be the
most extraordinary of human talents: the ability to move back
and forth through time and space in one’s mind. To think
positively about our prospects