A new study delivers a somewhat depressing message: Positive thinking may not be all it’s cracked up to be. “I kept hearing about how optimistic mindset was so great, but then you think about all the times that striving for accuracy might be better for the individual,” researcher Elizabeth Tenney says in a press release and podcast from the University of Utah. She offers the example of a person standing at a crevasse: “Do you really want that person to be optimistic about their chances of making it over this crevasse, or do you want them to be accurate about their chances?” To reach her conclusions, she conducted multiple experiments in which “predictor” subjects were charged with guessing how well “task completer” subjects would do on a given project.