Positive Illusions and Coping with Adversity

1996/12/01 by Shelley E. Taylor, David A. Armor · 701 citations
Psychology · #Optimism, Hope, and Well-being #Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction #Psychological and Temporal Perspectives Research #Illusion #Optimism #Coping (psychology) #Psychology #Personality #Perception #Social psychology #Big Five personality traits #Cognitive psychology #Developmental psychology #Clinical psychology

paper · doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1996.tb00947.x

published in Journal of Personality 64(4), 873-898 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 1996/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

ABSTRACT We review the literature showing that positive illusions (i.e., self‐aggrandizement, unrealistic optimism, and exaggerated perceptions of control) are common and associated with successful adjustment to stressful events, including conditions of extreme adversity. Using theory and recent data, we offer a basis for integrating positive illusions with the constraints of reality. We explicitly contrast the social psychological model of positive illusions with a personality viewpoint that addresses the question “Do higher levels of positive illusions predict higher levels of adjustment?” These issues are explored in the context of people coping with an array of normal stressful events, as well as those coping with more extreme stressful events, including cancer, heart disease, and HIV infection. Life is seldom as unendurable as, to judge by the facts, it ought to be. —Brooks Atkinson Life is seldom as unendurable as, to judge by the facts, it ought to be. Brooks Atkinson

Citations

• Adjustment to threatening events: A theory of cognitive adaptation.
• Heads I win, tails it's chance: The illusion of control as a function of the sequence of outcomes in a purely chance task.
• Do positive illusions foster mental health? An examination of the Taylor and Brown formulation.
• Effects of optimism on psychological and physical well-being: Theoretical overview and empirical update
• Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.
• Positive illusions and well-being revisited: Separating fact from fiction.
• Effects of deliberative and implemental mind-sets on illusion of control.
• Effects of mindset on positive illusions.
• The case for motivated reasoning.
• Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health.
• Advances In Experimental Social Psychology
• Coping with stress: Divergent strategies of optimists and pessimists.
• Optimism, coping, psychological distress, and high-risk sexual behavior among men at risk for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Cited by

• Motivational and Emotional Aspects of the Self
• Positive Illusions in Parenting: Every Child Is Above Average
• Self-Enhancement and Psychological Adjustment: A Meta-Analytic Review
• Long-Term Costs of Inflated Self-Estimate on Academic Performance among Adolescent Students: A Case of Second-Language Achievements
• No pain, no gain: cross-lagged analyses of posttraumatic growth and anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress and prolonged grief symptoms after loss
• Motivated sensitivity to preference-inconsistent information.
• Self-Threat Magnifies the Self-Serving Bias: A Meta-Analytic Integration
• Moderators of the adaptiveness of self-enhancement: Operationalization, motivational domain, adjustment facet, and evaluator
• Portrait of the self-enhancer: Well adjusted and well liked or maladjusted and friendless?
• Accountability as a deterrent to self-enhancement: The search for mechanisms.
• Do Chinese Self-Enhance or Self-Efface? It's a Matter of Domain
• On Pancultural Self-Enhancement
• The evolution and psychology of self-deception
• Positive illusions [wikipedia]