An index of wishful thinking—the tendency for a person's belief about a particular proposition or issue to accord with his or her feeling about the desirability of the issue-used inappropriately in previous studies is empirically compared with a seemingly more plausible but also inappropriate index, and with a more appropriate index derived from an approach suggested by Norman (1967). Results indicate that previous studies may have overestimated the extent of wishful thinking by individuals or even reported its existence when it did not, infact, occur.
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