  We study a persuasion problem in which a sender designs an information
structure to induce a non-Bayesian receiver to take a particular action. The
receiver, who is privately informed about his preferences, is a wishful
thinker: he is systematically overoptimistic about the most favorable outcomes.
We show that wishful thinking can lead to a qualitative shift in the structure
of optimal persuasion compared to the Bayesian case, whenever the sender is
uncertain about what the receiver perceives as the best-case outcome in his
decision problem.
