Wishful Thinking may refer to:

• Wishful thinking, a type of logical fallacy
• Wishful Thinking (British band), a British Rock Group
• Wishful Thinking (band), an Australian punk band
• Wishful Thinking (album), an album by Propaganda
• Wishful Thinking (film), a film with Drew Barrymore
• Wishful Thinking (Duncan Sheik song), a song by Duncan Sheik, featured in the 1998 film adaptation of Great Expectations
• Wishful Thinking (Travis Tritt song), a song by Travis Tritt
• Wishful Thinking (China Crisis song), a song by China Crisis
• Wishful Thinking (Captain N episode), an episode of Captain N: The Game Master.
• "Wishful Thinkin'", a song by Poison from their 2002 album Hollyweird
• "Wishful Thinkin'", a song by Sly & the Family Stone from their 1974 album Small Talk
• "Wishful Thinkin'", a 1967 song by Tony Booth (aka Johnny Booth)

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Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence or rationality.

Studies have consistently shown that holding all else equal, subjects will predict positive outcomes to be more likely than negative outcomes. See positive outcome bias.

Prominent examples of wishful thinking include:

• Economist Irving Fisher said that "stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau" a few weeks before Stock Market Crash of 1929, which was followed by the Great Depression.
• British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain informed the public that the 1938 Munich Agreement guaranteed "peace in our time".
• Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's plan for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
• President John F. Kennedy believed that, if overpowered by Cuban forces, the CIA-backed rebels could "escape destruction by melting into the countryside" in the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

As a logical fallacy

In addition to being a cognitive bias and a poor way of making decisions, wishful thinking can also be a specific logical fallacy in an argument when it is assumed that because we wish something to be true or false that it is actually true or false. This fallacy has the form "I wish that P is true/false, therefore P is true/false."^[1] Wishful thinking underlies appeals to emotion, and is a red herring.

Some atheists argue that much of theology, particularly arguments for the existence of God, is based on wishful thinking because it takes the desired outcome (that a god or gods exist) and tries to prove it on the basis of a premise through reasoning which can be analysed as fallacious, but which may nevertheless be wished "true" in the mind of the believer. Some theologians argue that it is actually atheism which is the product of wishful thinking, in that atheists may not want to believe in any gods or may not want there to be any gods. Both of these arguments would better be described as confirmation bias. Also, pseudoscience is often generated and maintained by wishful thinking about human abilities.

Related fallacies are the Negative proof and Argument from ignorance fallacies ("It hasn't been proved false, so it must be true." and vice versa). For instance, a believer in UFOs may accept that most UFO photos are faked, but claim that the ones that haven't been debunked must be considered genuine.

See also

• Self-serving bias
• Choice-supportive bias
• Emotional memory
• Groupthink

External links

• A study demonstrating wishful thinking in memory

•  • [ e] Fallacies of relevance
General	Absurdity • Accident • Ad nauseam • Argument from ignorance • Argument from silence • Bandwagon Fallacy • Base rate fallacy • Bulverism • Compound question • Fallacy of many questions • False compromise • Middle ground • Naturalistic fallacy • Proof by assertion • Irrelevant conclusion • Special pleading • Straw man • Style over substance fallacy • Two wrongs make a right
Appeals to emotion	Fear • Flattery • Nature • Novelty • Pity • Ridicule • Repugnance • Spite
Genetic fallacies	Ad hominem (Ad hominem tu quoque) • Appeal to authority • Appeal to motive • Appeal to tradition • Appeal to wealth • Appeal to poverty • Association fallacy • Chronological snobbery • Ipsedixitism • Poisoning the well • Appeal to Etymology • Reductio ad Hitlerum
Appeals to consequences	Appeal to force • Wishful thinking