Many prominent theorists have argued that accurate perceptions of the self, the world, and the future are essential for mental health. Yet considerable research evidence suggests that overly positive selfevaluations, exaggerated perceptions of control or mastery, and unrealistic optimism are characteristic of normal human thought. Moreover, these illusions appear to promote other criteria of mental health, including the ability to care about others, the ability to be happy or contented, and the ability to engage in productive and creative work. These strategies may succeed, in large part, because both the social world and cognitive-processing mechanisms impose niters on incoming information that distort it in a positive direction; negative information may be isolated and represented in as unthreatening a manner as possible. These positive illusions may be especially useful when an individual receives negative feedback or is otherwise threatened and may be especially adaptive under these circumstances. Decades of psychological wisdom have established contact with reality as a hallmark of mental health. In this view, the well-adjusted person is thought to engage in accurate reality testing, whereas the individual whose vision is clouded by illusion is regarded as vulnerable to, if not already a victim of, mental illness. Despite its plausibility, this viewpoint is increasingly difficult to maintain (cf. Lazarus, 1983). A substantial amount of research testifies to the prevalence of illusion in normal human cognition (see Fiske& Taylor, 1984;Greenwald, 1980; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Sackeim, 1983; Taylor, 1983). Moreover, these illusions often involve central aspects of the self and the environment and, therefore, cannot be dismissed as inconsequential. In this article, we review research suggesting that certain illusions may be adaptive for mental health and well-being. In particular, we examine evidence that a set of interrelated positive illusions—namely, unrealistically positive self-evaluations, exaggerated perceptions of control or mastery, and unrealistic optimism—can serve a wide variety of cognitive, affective, and social functions. We also attempt to resolve the following para

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Illusion and well-being: a social psychological perspective on mental health

In this chapter a theory of motivation and emotion developed from an attributional perspective is presented Before undertaking this central task, it might be beneficial to review the progression of the book In Chapter 1 it was suggested that causal attributions have been prevalent throughout history and in disparate cultures Studies reviewed in Chapter 2 revealed a large number of causal ascriptions within motivational domains, and different ascriptions in disparate domains Yet some attributions, particularly ability and effort in the achievement area, dominate causal thinking To compare and contrast causes such as ability and effort, their common denominators or shared properties were identified Three causal dimensions, examined in Chapter 3, are locus, stability, and controllability, with intentionality and globality as other possible causal properties As documented in Chapter 4, the perceived stability of a cause influences the subjective probability of success following a previous success or failure; causes perceived as enduring increase the certainty that the prior outcome will be repeated in the future And all the causal dimensions, as well as the outcome of an activity and specific causes, influence the emotions experienced after attainment or nonattainment of a goal The affects linked to causal dimensions include pride (with locus), hopelessness and resignation (with stability), and anger, gratitude, guilt, pity, and shame (with controllability)

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An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion.

It is proposed that motivation may affect reasoning through reliance on a biased set of cognitive processes—that is, strategies for accessing, constructing, and evaluating beliefs. The motivation to be accurate enhances use of those beliefs and strategies that are considered most appropriate, whereas the motivation to arrive at particular conclusions enhances use of those that are considered most likely to yield the desired conclusion. There is considerable evidence that people are more likely to arrive at conclusions that they want to arrive at, but their ability to do so is constrained by their ability to construct seemingly reasonable justifications for these conclusions. These ideas can account for a wide variety of research concerned with motivated reasoning. The notion that goals or motives affect reasoning has a long and controversial history in social psychology. The propositions that motives may affect perceptions (Erdelyi, 1974), attitudes (Festinger, 1957), and attributions (Heider, 1958) have been put forth by some psychologists and challenged by others. Although early researchers and theorists took it for granted that motivation may cause people to make self-serving attributions and permit them to believe what they want to believe because they want to believe it, this view, and the research used to uphold it, came under concentrated criticism in the 1970s. The major and most damaging criticism of the motivational view was that all research purported to demonstrate motivated reasoning could be reinterpreted in entirely cognitive, nonmotivational terms (Miller & Ross, 1975; Nisbett & Ross, 1980). Thus people could draw self-serving conclusions not because they wanted to but because these conclusions seemed more plausible, given their prior beliefs and expectancies. Because both cognitive and motivational accounts could be generated for any empirical study, some theorists argued that the hot versus cold cognition controversy could not be solved, at least in the attribution paradigm (Ross & Fletcher, 1985; Tetlock & Levi, 1982). One reason for the persistence of this controversy lies in the failure of researchers to explore the mechanisms underlying motivated reasoning. Recently, several authors have attempted to rectify this neglect (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983; Kunda, 1987; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987; Sorrentino & Higgins, 1986). All these authors share a view of motivation as having its effects through cognitive processes: People rely on cognitive processes and representations to arrive at their desired conclusions, but motivation plays a role in determining which of these will be used on a given occasion.

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The case for motivated reasoning.

Numerous studies show that happy individuals are successful across multiple life domains, including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health. The authors suggest a conceptual model to account for these findings, arguing that the happiness-success link exists not only because success makes people happy, but also because positive affect engenders success. Three classes of evidence--crosssectional, longitudinal, and experimental--are documented to test their model. Relevant studies are described and their effect sizes combined meta-analytically. The results reveal that happiness is associated with and precedes numerous successful outcomes, as well as behaviors paralleling success. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that positive affect--the hallmark of well-being--may be the cause of many of the desirable characteristics, resources, and successes correlated with happiness. Limitations, empirical issues, and important future research questions are discussed.

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The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?

Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

This work documents attributional and account approaches to the study of close relationships. The volume, which includes theoretical and empirical work, examines both distressed and non-distressed types of relationships such as nonmarital-romantic, marital and familial, as well as those between patients and medical professionals, and others. Among the issues discussed are also communication problems in marriage and their relationship with casual attributions; marital violence and its relationship with early learning experience; ego-defensive attribution and excuse-making in couples and with respect to medical problems; and attributions about transitions in relationships. Commentaries by a number of academics who have written extensively about attributional and narrative processes conclude the volume. This monograph on social psychology, differential psychology and personality research is intended for social psychologists, family studies scholars and sociologists.

Attributions, accounts, and close relationships

Psychotherapy research and behavior change

The nature and motivations of accounts for failed relationships.

This paper extends recent theorising on the psychology of accounts and account-making. It is argued that while work on this topic in the area of close relationships and reactions to stress is incre...

A Social Psychological Model of Account-Making in Response to Severe Stress:

A study was conducted to compare the interpretive and coping responses of female and male survivors of incest and female survivors of sexual assault by a nonrelative. Twenty-eight persons responded to a questionnaire that asked them to provide an account of the nature of an assault(s), the role of confidants in helping them cope with the assault, how they coped and tried to understand the assault over time, how they felt the assault affected their close relationships, and how they evaluated their current state of recovery. The results for male and female incest groups were similar in revealing great difficulty in coping and in having adult close relationships. These two groups showed more continuing lack of resolution than did the female nonfamilial survivors. The male group of incest survivors showed the greatest overall difficulty. The findings are discussed in terms of the roles of searching for meaning via account-making and confiding as ways of dealing with long-term, major stressors in people's lives.

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John H. Harvey

Papers

Attributions, accounts, and close relationships

Psychotherapy research and behavior change

The nature and motivations of accounts for failed relationships.

A Social Psychological Model of Account-Making in Response to Severe Stress:

Account-Making and Confiding as Acts of Meaning in Response to Sexual Assault