"...trait optimism doesn't distort how new information is integrated: subjects update their estimates similarly following information that is better or worse than expected."
Are people with high trait optimism disappointed to a greater extent than others? They have to adjust their expectations further to align them with reality/ the results.
Can optimism lead to better outcomes? Can belief in a greater likelihood of the reward lead to it happening? Probably doesn't apply to lotteries and similar situations.
It's probably worth looking at optimism across multiple independent processes.
As a proportion of human interaction, I would wager that processes which are percievably stationary (or stationary enough), and that a human will interact with over and over again is actually relatively small.
I would hypothesize that had this task been set up with 'moving parts', then optimists could rationalize away their expectations as 'this time it's different'.
I think ultimately, optimism 'works' not because it influences the probability of events happening, but because it influences the distribution of 'payoffs'.
Are people with high trait optimism disappointed to a greater extent than others? They have to adjust their expectations further to align them with reality/ the results.
Can optimism lead to better outcomes? Can belief in a greater likelihood of the reward lead to it happening? Probably doesn't apply to lotteries and similar situations.
Edit: fixed punctuation.