City Research Online

Abstract

Prosocial behavior is affected by the beliefs people have about others. The maintenance of these beliefs is biased: people are vicariously optimistic when updating beliefs about the future of others they care about. This vicarious optimism influences prosocial behavior and might be shaped by the culture people live in. We investigated this question by measuring learning from good and bad news for oneself, friends, and strangers in a pre-registered study of Chinese and American participants (N = 963). American participants showed a stronger bias for better-than-expected “good news” over worse-than-expected “bad news” when learning about themselves (optimism bias) and others (vicarious optimism) compared to Chinese participants. Chinese participants showed vicarious optimism only when learning about a friend, while American participants showed the most vicarious optimism when learning about an identifiable stranger. Our results provide evidence that culture might shape social behavior by biasing learning about the future of others.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc. This article has been published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by SAGE and it's available online at: us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/journal/personality-and-social-psychology-bulletin . Reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses.
Publisher Keywords:	culture and cognition, learning, helping/prosocial behavior, optimism bias, vicarious optimism
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Departments:	School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Psychology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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