Positive Illusions - Mitigation

Mitigation

Depressive realism suggests that depressed people actually have a more realistic view of themselves and the world than mentally healthy people. The nature of depression seems to have its role in diminishing positive illusions. For example, individuals who are low in self-esteem, slightly depressed, or both, are more balanced in self-perceptions. Likewise, these mildly depressed individuals are found to be less vulnerable to overestimations of (their) control over events (Golin et al., 1979) and to assess future circumstances in biased fashion (Ruehlman, West, & Pasahow, 1985). However, these findings may not be because depressed people have less illusions than nondepressed. Studies such as Dykman et al. (1989) show that depressed people believe they have no control in situations where they actually do, so their perspection is not more accurate overall. It might also be that the pessimistic bias of depressives results in "depressive realism" when, for example, measuring estimation of control when there is none, as proposed by Allan et al. (2007). Also, Msetfi et al. (2005, 2007) found that when replicating Alloy and Abramson's findings 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.

Two hypotheses have been stated in the literature with regard to avoiding the drawbacks of positive illusions: firstly by minimising the illusions in order to take the full advantage of the benefits, and secondly through making important decisions (Gollwitzer & Kinney, 1989). According to Roy Baumeister, a small amount of positive distortion may be optimal. He hypothesizes that those who fall within this optimal margin of illusion may provide for the best mental health.