Positive illusions are a form of self-deception or self-enhancement that feel good, maintain self-esteem, or avoid discomfort, at least in the short term.
[3] The illusions may have direct health benefits by helping the person cope with stress, or by promoting work towards success.
The reference to well-being here means 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 effectively combat stress when necessary.
[24] Positive illusions are particularly useful for helping people to get through major stressful events or traumas, such as life-threatening illnesses or serious accidents.
People who are able to develop or maintain their positive beliefs in the face of these potential setbacks tend to cope more successfully with them, and show less psychological distress than those less able.
[28] When people believe they can achieve a difficult goal, this expectation often creates a sense of energy and excitement, resulting in more progress than would otherwise have been the case.
Positive illusions can be argued to be adaptive because they enable people to feel hopeful in the face of uncontrollable risks.
Its results indicate that different forms of self-enhancement are positively linked to personal adjustment (high subjective well-being and low depressiveness).
[35] Apart from having better psychological adjustment with more active coping,[36] the ability to develop and sustain positive beliefs in the face of setbacks has its health benefits.
Research with men who had the HIV virus, or already diagnosed with AIDS has shown that those who hold unrealistically positive assessments of their abilities to control their health conditions take longer to develop symptoms, experience a slower course of illness, as well as other positive cognitive outcomes, such as acceptance of the loss.
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.
[38] A second risk is that people who hold positive illusions will set goals, or undertake courses of actions which are more likely to produce failure than success.
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 can become overly optimistic when they turn to implementing their plans.
Although there is no guarantee that one's realistic prediction would turn out to be accurate,[38] the shift from realism to optimism may provide the fuel needed to bring potentially difficult tasks from conception to fruition.
In other words, wherever people fail to recognise when other plausible definitions of ability are relevant for success, estimates of their future well-being will be overstated.
Positive illusions have been linked with decreasing levels of self-esteem and well-being, as well as narcissism and lower academic achievement among students.
[44] Likewise, these mildly depressed individuals are found to be less vulnerable to overestimations of (their) control over events[45] and to assess future circumstances in biased fashion.
the overestimation of control in nondepressed people only showed up when the interval was long enough, implying that this is because they take more aspects of a situation into account than their depressed counterparts.