Positive Illusions

Positive illusions are unrealistically favorable attitudes people hold about themselves or about people close to them. They are a form of self-deception or self-enhancement that feels good, sustains self-esteem, or avoids discomfort, at least in the short term, and they take three general forms: an inflated assessment of one's own abilities, unrealistic optimism about the future, and an illusion of control. The term originates in a 1988 paper by Shelley E. Taylor and Jonathon D. Brown, whose model of mental health holds that certain positive illusions are highly prevalent in normal thought and predict outcomes traditionally associated with good mental health, though there remains real controversy over how reliably people actually show positive illusions and whether the illusions genuinely benefit the people who hold them.