To fill in the gaps, my co-authors (Stefano Puntoni, Gabriele Paolacci, and Maarten Vissers of Rotterdam School of Management) and I revisited data from 28 past studies on optimism bias, encompassing 8,826 participants in all. Our article in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes posits that much of the human response usually ascribed to optimism bias is actually a smokescreen to ward off social disapproval. If so, the core of our personalities may have more to do with caution than cockeyed optimism.