Positive illusions

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Many people hold beliefs about themselves, the world, and the future that are more positive than reality can sustain. These beliefs are called positive illusions.

Contents 1 What positive illusions do people hold? 2 Positive illusions and mental health 3 Potential liabilities of positive illusions 4 Positive illusions and physical health 5 Origins of positive illusions 6 See also 7 External links 8 References

[edit] What positive illusions do people hold?

Three types of positive illusions have been documented: self aggrandizing self-perceptions (that is, people consistently regard themselves more positively and less negatively than they regard others and than others regard them), perceptions of mastery (that is, most people believe that they can exert more personal control over environmental circumstances than is actually the case), and unrealistic optimism (that is, most people are optimistic and believe that the present is better than the past and that the future will be better as well, especially for themselves). For example, typically, people overestimate the likelihood that they will experience a wide variety of pleasant events, such as liking their first job or having a gifted child, and somewhat underestimate their risk of succumbing to negative events, include being fired, getting divorced, or succumbing to a chronic disease.

What are some common examples of positive illusions in everyday life? If you make a list of the things you want to accomplish in a day, but find that you have completed far fewer than you had expected by the end of the day, you are showing unrealistic optimism, a positive illusion about your productivity. If you bet on a sports team that is not favored to win because you have a hunch they can pull it out, you are showing a positive illusion. You may of course be right some of the time, but looked at from the standpoint of its objective likelihood, your belief would still be considered illusory.

[edit] Positive illusions and mental health

Why do people hold positive illusions? One reason is that these positive beliefs are tied to psychological wellbeing. By wellbeing, psychologists mean the ability to feel good about oneself, to be creative and/or productive in one’s work, to form satisfying relationships with other people, and to combat stress effectively. Positive illusions are particularly useful for helping people to combat major stressful events or traumas, such as a life threatening illness or serious accident. People who are able to develop or maintain their positive beliefs in the face of these potential setbacks cope more successfully with them and show less psychological distress. For example, psychological research shows that cancer survivors often report a higher quality of life than people who have never had cancer at all. This is because they have allowed the traumatic experience to evoke a sense of meaning and purpose in life.

People also hold positive illusions because such beliefs enhance their productivity and persistence toward tasks on which they might otherwise give up. When people believe they can achieve a difficult goal, this expectation often creates a sense of energy and excitement, the fuel needed to persist to bring goals to realization. Even though people sometimes fall short of achieving all they set out to do, they may make more progress than would otherwise be the case. Think, for example, of a day in which you made a long list of things to do. At the end of the day, there were no doubt things left undone, but you almost certainly did more than if you had made a more realistic list with only two or three items.

Finally, positive illusions are adaptive because they enable people to feel hopeful in the face of uncontrollable risks. This process may keep people from becoming immobilized or depressed by seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

[edit] Potential liabilities of positive illusions

There are several potential risks that may arise if people hold positive illusions about their personal qualities and likely outcomes. The first is that they set themselves up for unpleasant surprises for which they are ill prepared when their overly optimistic beliefs are disconfirmed. Research suggests that for the most part, these adverse outcomes do not occur. People’s beliefs are more realistic at times when realism serves them particularly well, for example, when initially making plans, when accountability is likely, or following negative feedback from the environment. Following a setback or failure, people’s overly positive beliefs may be attached to a new undertaking (Armor & Taylor, 1998).

A second risk is that people who hold positive illusions will set goals or undertake courses of actions that are likely to produce failure. This concern appears to be largely without basis. Research shows that when people are deliberating future courses of actions for themselves, such as whether to take a particular job or go to graduate school, their perceptions are fairly realistic, but they become overly optimistic when they turn to implementing their plans. The shift from realism to optimism may provide the fuel needed to bring potentially difficult tasks to fruition (Taylor & Gollwitzer, 1995).

A third risk is that positive self perceptions may have social costs. People who are self promoting in public situations do indeed turn other people off. Initially, their upbeat optimistic nature endears them to others, but over time, other people become aware of their self absorption and turn away from them. People who hold overly positive self assessments privately, however, do not turn others off and indeed the opposite is the case. They make positive impressions on others, they are well liked by their friends, and they impress clinicians and peers as mentally healthy. One might say, it’s ok to think you’re better than others as long as you don’t act that way.

A potential limitation of positive illusions concerns their cultural prevalence. Although it is easy to document positive illusions in Western cultures, people in East Asian cultures are much less likely to self enhance and indeed, are often self effacing instead. Positive illusions may nonetheless be manifested in group-enhancing biases and may also be privately held, but not publicly voiced in East Asian cultures.

[edit] Positive illusions and physical health

The ability to develop and sustain positive beliefs in the face of setbacks has health benefits. Research with men who were HIV seropositive or already diagnosed with AIDS has shown that those who hold unrealistically positive assessments of their abilities to control their health conditions experience a longer time to developing symptoms and a slower course of illness. Men with AIDS who held overly positive beliefs about their ability to combat their illness lived on average 2 year longer than men who were more pessimistic about their circumstances.

[edit] Origins of positive illusions

Where do positive illusions come from? Research suggests that there may be modest genetic contributions to the ability to develop positive illusions. Early environment also plays an important role: people are more able to develop these positive beliefs in nurturant environments than in harsh ones. Gene-environment interactions may also play a role.

Can positive illusions be learned? There is no reason to think that positive illusions cannot be taught and indeed, many well-established therapies that involve teaching people to think better of themselves, their circumstances, and their outcomes may rely, at least in part, on instilling a somewhat illusory positive glow about oneself in the world.

Research contributors to this field include David Armor, Jonathon Brown, Julienne Bower, Suzanne Segerstrom, Shelley Taylor, Vickie Helgesen.

[edit] See also

• mental health
• positive psychology
• psychological resilience
• quality of life

[edit] External links

• Time Magazine 2005 cover story on Positive Psychology

(http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/images/TimeMagazine/Time-Happiness.pdf)

• “You are what you expect” New York Times article by Jim Holt

(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/magazine/21wwln_lede.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

[edit] References

• Armor, D.A. et al. (2002). When predictions fail: The dilemma of unrealistic optimism. In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman (Eds.) Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment (pp. 334-347). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

• Bower, J.E., et al. (1998). Cognitive processing, discovery of meaning, CD 4 decline, and AIDS-related mortality among bereaved HIV-seropositive men. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66, 979-986.

• Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (in press). Social cognition (3rd ed.). New York: Random House.

• Reed, G.M. et al. (1994). "Realistic acceptance" as a predictor of decreased survival time in gay men with AIDS. Health Psychology, 13, 299-307.

• Reed, G.M. et al. (1999). Negative HIV-specific expectancies and AIDS-related bereavement as predictors of symptom onset in asymptomatic HIV-positive gay men. Health Psychology, 18, 354-363.

• Segerstrom, S.C. et al. (1998). Optimism is associated with mood, coping, and immune change in response to stress. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1646-1655.

• Taylor, S.E., & Brown, J. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-210.