Positive Illusion Essay

396 Words2 Pages
People are generally unwilling to give feedback, but when it is given, it is overwhelmingly likely to be positive (Taylor and Brown 1988). People exaggerate their positive personal characteristics (Colvin, Block et al. 1995). People tend to recall more positive than negative information about themselves (Colvin, Block et al. 1995). Most healthy adults are positively biased in their self-perception (Taylor and Brown 1994). PROS: Mentally healthy person appears to have the enviable capacity to distort reality in a direction that enhances self-esteem, maintains beliefs in personal efficacy, and promotes an optimistic view of the future (Taylor and Brown 1988). Self-esteem and mastery are critical psychological variables that can have important consequences for behaviour, including health behaviours (Williams, Haile et al. 2012). CONS: Unrealistic optimism, an exaggerated sense of mastery, and excessive self-confidence may inspire people to make changes that might be avoided if the uphill battle ahead was fully appreciated (Taylor and Brown 1988). Unrealistic optimism may lead people to ignore legitimate risks in their environments and to fail to take measures to offset those risks (Taylor and Brown 1988). Self-enhancement is associated with poor social skills and psychological maladjustment (Colvin, Block et al. 1995). Depressed and low-self-esteem individuals exhibit more accurate perceptions than persons who are not depressed or who are high in self-esteem (Colvin, Block et al. 1995), but it is also found that depressed people are negatively biased in their perception (Taylor and Brown 1994). Men who self-enhanced were described as being guileful and deceitful, distrustful of people, and as having a brittle ego-defence system (Colvin, Block et al. 1995). Women who self-enhanced were characterised as “sex-typed” and who “regard self as physically
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