Sources of Optimism among Prospective Group Members

Prospective members are often overly optimistic about their future experiences in a group. Three possible sources for this optimism were investigated: recruitment efforts by the group, feelings of cognitive dissonance about the group, and a general need for self-enhancement. College freshmen who were interested in joining a particular campus group were asked to evaluate the rewards and costs of membership in that group both for themselves and for the average student. They also described the group's efforts to recruit them and any reasons they had for feeling dissonant about the group. As in previous research, the students were very optimistic about membership in their chosen groups. Neither the recruitment efforts of these groups nor any potential feelings of dissonance about them were strongly related to that optimism. Instead, the students' optimism seemed to arise from a general need for self-enhancement. Students were much more optimistic about their own future experiences in a group than about the experiences of the average person in that same group.