“Take away the life‐lie … “: Positive illusions and creative self‐deception

Abstract

Abstract In a well‐known paper “Illusion and well‐being”, Taylor and Brown maintain that positive illusions about the self play a significant role in the maintenance of mental health, as well as in the ability to maintain caring inter‐personal relations and a sense of well‐being. These illusions include unrealistically positive self‐evaluations, exaggerated perceptions of personal control, and unrealistic optimism about one's future. Accurate self‐knowledge, they maintain, is not an indispensable ingredient of mental health and well‐being. Two lines of criticism are directed against the creative self‐deception hypothesis, one methodological and one substantive. First, it is argued that Taylor and Brown's method of eliciting experimental subjects’ self‐reports and comparative self‐ratings under artificial experimental conditions lacks ecological validity and phenomenological realism. Second, it is argued that positive illusions diminish the range of reactive other‐regarding attitudes and emotions that people can adopt. A literary case history (Ibsen's The wild duck) which satisfies the criteria of ecological adequacy is used to illustrate the latter point.