This
habit poses a challenge to us in our dealings with people who have low
tolerance of negativity. Their tendency
is to suppress anxiety and maintain a positive self-image of themselves or
their surroundings. This lens allows
them to maintain their balance at the expense of not acknowledging
reality. If practiced for a long time,
the habit of self-deception slowly clouds one's judgment. While Freud understood self-deception as a
kind of protection mechanism and sometimes a false sense of security that self-deception
creates contribute to psychological health, this defense mechanism could also
lead to being delusional. Once
delusional, people who may have acquired this kind of practice, to preserve
their optimism, may refuse to see the reality.
This poses another challenge because the first step to real positivism
is the ability to acknowledge the reality of the situation, no matter how
negative it could be. Only when this
conflict is recognized can real positivity start taking place. Feldman found out that researchers studying depression
have found that clinically depressed people often have surprisingly accurate
views of themselves - a phenomenon known as depressive realism. People suffering from depression make better
assessments than nondepressed people about their control over events, their
role in effective positive outcomes, their good qualities, and their
shortcomings. Their perceptions are not
irrationally pessimistic. On the contrary, they are unusually clear-eyed.[1] This is not to say, however, that one needs
to be depressed to clearly see one's self or surrounding. However to those who refuse to see reality,
they are consistently in the stage of denial and they bury in their unconscious
guilt and fears that might threaten their ego and this could lead to mental
imbalance.
While
self-deception can help preserve our optimism, the bigger challenge is how to
realize we are falling victims to self-deceptive optimism. What are the indications that we could be
deluding ourselves? How does delusional
positivism affect our relationship with others?
How can we face the negativity around us and still be able to maintain a
positive disposition? And most
importantly, how can we balance what is real and what is positive? These are just some of the many questions that
posit an individual in the middle of optimism and pessimism. Thus, it is through these issues that this
writing discusses the other side of the optimist.
Self-Deceptive Optimism
How do
we know we are falling victims to our own self-deceptive optimism? Unfortunately, we usually don't. In the book, You are Not so Smart by David McRaney (a book that will make you
smarter, by the way - a MUST read!), our different cognitive biases are
discussed. He wrote in his book that we
have a deep desire to be right all of the time and a deeper desire to see
ourselves in a positive light both morally and behaviorally. We can stretch our mind pretty far to achieve
these goals.[2] Cognitive biases, according to McRaney, are
predictable patterns of thought and behavior that lead us to draw incorrect
conclusions. He further wrote:
"You
and everyone else come into the world preloaded with these pesky and completely wrong ways of seeing
things, and you rarely notice them. Many of them
serve to keep you confident in your own perceptions or to inhibit you from seeing yourself as a buffoon. The maintenance of a positive self-image seems to be so important to the human
mind you have evolved mental mechanisms
designed to make you feel awesome about yourself. Cognitive biases
lead to poor choices, bad judgments, and wacky insights that are often totally incorrect."
According
to him, most people believe that their opinions are the result of years of
rational, objective analysis. The truth,
however, according to him is that their opinions are the result of years of
paying attention to information that confirmed what you believed while ignoring
the information that challenged their preconceived notions.[3] This is what we call confirmation bias - you want to be right about how you see the
world, so you seek out information that confirms your beliefs and avoid
contradictory evidence and opinions.[4] Our confirmation bias bends toward our
looking for validation.
Most
believers of positivism whose tolerance for anxiety is low often fall victim
into self-deception through this bias so that they could maintain their
positive view of themselves and the world.
This often compromises the truthfulness of their words and along the
process, unfortunately, the integrity of their relationship with other people.
(To be
continued.)
