Taylor, S. E. & Brown J. D., Illusion and Well Being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 1988, 103, 193-210.

---

Evidence suggests that positive self-evaluations, over optimism, and perceptions of mastery are normal and supportive of good mental health. They help people care about others, be happy and content, and to be productive and creative. This works because the cognitive mind has filters that distort information in a positive direction and represent negative information as non-threatening as possible.

Traditional theory maintains that sane people have good contact with reality. Early cognition theorist (like Nisbett & Ross) chose the idea of a naive scientists rationally processing data and making inferences and decisions. Yet real info processing has incomplete data gathering, shortcuts and biases.. The author substitues "illusion" for these terms to emphasize their euduring nature.

Various experiments show that people have unrealistically postive views of the self, exaggerated perceptions of personal control, and unrealistic optimism.

Unrealistically Positive Views of the Self
People judge positive traits more characteristic of self than negative traits. Negative traits are difficult to recall. People racall task performance better than it was. People belive they have improved when their performance hasn't changed.

People generally see themselves as better than others. They give others less credit for success then themselves. Friends are evaluated more positively than strangers. They believe they are less likely to experience negative events. They believe they will perform better on future tasks. In fact, it seems that people who are depressed or in poor mental health don't have this positive bias.

Effect of Ilusions on Aspects of Mental Health

Happiness or Contentment
70-80% of people say they are happy, and 60% say more than others. Happy people have higher opinions of themselves and feel they are in more control and are more unrealistically optimistic. People who attribute success to self and failure to situation have a better mood.

Ability to Care for Others
People ina positive mood are more likely to help others, initiate conversations, negotiate better. "Positve affect is associated with increased sociability and benevolence"

Capacity for Creative, Productive Work
Positive affect seems to improve recall and problem solving strategies. The illusion of self-control and positivism fosters motivation, persistance at tasks, and more effective performance. Peoploe with high self-esteem have higher estimations of future performance. Beliefs in personal efficacy increase motivation. Mastery-oriented children perform better than "helpless" thnking children.

Higher expectations of success cause people to work longer. One of the chief symptoms of depression is inactivity.

Reconciling Contradictory Views of Mental Health
Clincal research has been with abnormal people. Social research has been somewhat articial in labs and probably is too suportive of illusions. Most situations are new, so people can't rely on past information

People are more likely to use self-serving attributions when the behavior is important to them. Illusion are useful in dealing with tragic events.

Management of Negative Feedback

People are unwilling to give negative feedback. These social norms ensure that most feedback is positive. People also signal how they want to be treated by adopting physical cues and by taking certain roles. People often seek feedback when they know it will be positive.

People also select friends that have similar attitudes and belief, which reinforce their own perception that their own beliefs are correct. The maintainence of self-esteem is a big benefit of social support. Friends agreement on one's personal attributes can act as a buffer against disconfirming feedback.

People also encode information consistent with their prior beliefs. Pre-existing beliefs affect how one views the relevancy of new information, especially if it is ambiguous. Ambiguous info is usually processed to confirm one's pre-existing beliefs. Discrepant feedback is often seen as eroneous than feedback consistent with self-perception. Or it is explained away by situational factors.

People also remember positive information better than negative feedback.

Even if there is a change in self-perception (like after failing a test) is is usually temporary -- people move back to the orignial state (known as cognitive drift).

Finally people may change from positive feedback more from negative feedback. Living with positive illusions may have some long term drawbacks. They may not prepare for catastrophic events. Or people may trample on the rights of others. People may oversimplify interpretation of events and ignore important sources of information.