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Pollyanna Principle
The Pollyanna principle (also called Pollyannaism or positivity bias) is the tendency for people to remember pleasant items more accurately than unpleasant ones. Research indicates that at the subconscious level, the mind tends to focus on the optimistic; while at the conscious level, it tends to focus on the negative. This subconscious bias is similar to the Barnum effect. Development The name derives from the 1913 novel '' Pollyanna'' by Eleanor H. Porter describing a girl who plays the "glad game"—trying to find something to be glad about in every situation. The novel has been adapted to film several times, most famously in 1920 and 1960. An early use of the name "Pollyanna" in psychological literature was in 1969 by Boucher and Osgood who described a ''Pollyanna hypothesis'' as a universal human tendency to use positive words more frequently and diversely than negative words in communicating. Empirical evidence for this tendency has been provided by computational analyse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optimistic
Optimism is the attitude or mindset of expecting events to lead to particularly positive, favorable, desirable, and hopeful outcomes. A common idiom used to illustrate optimism versus pessimism is a glass filled with water to the halfway point: an optimist is said to see the glass as half full, while a pessimist sees the glass as half empty. In ordinary English, optimism may be synonymous with ''idealism''—often, unrealistic or foolish optimism in particular. The term derives from the Latin , meaning "best". To be optimistic, in the typical sense of the word, is to expect the best possible outcome from any given situation. This is usually referred to in psychology as dispositional optimism. It reflects a belief that future conditions will work out for the best. As a trait, it fosters resilience in the face of stress. Theories of optimism include dispositional models and models of explanatory style. Methods to measure optimism have been developed within both of these ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Cloud cuckoo land is a state of absurdity, over-optimistic fantasy or an unrealistically idealistic state of mind where everything appears to be perfect. Someone who is said to "live in cloud cuckoo land" is a person who thinks that completely impossible things might happen, rather than understanding how things really are. It also hints that the person referred to is naive, unaware of realities or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief. In the modern world, a "cloud cuckoo lander" is defined as someone who is seen as "crazy" or "strange" by most average people. Cloud cuckoo landers often do or say things that seemingly only make sense to themselves; they also display cleverness at times in ways no one else would think of. Cockaigne, the land of plenty in medieval myth, can be considered the predecessor to the modern-day cloud cuckoo land, which is depicted as a realm that could be seen as an escape from the complexities of real life. It was an imaginary place of extrem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-serving Bias
A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner. It is the belief that individuals tend to ascribe success to their own abilities and efforts, but ascribe failure to external factors. When individuals reject the validity of negative feedback, focus on their strengths and achievements but overlook their faults and failures, or take more credit for their group's work than they give to other members, they are protecting their self-esteem from threat and injury. These cognitive and perceptual tendencies perpetuate illusions and error, but they also serve the self's need for esteem. For example, a student who attributes earning a good grade on an exam to their own intelligence and preparation but attributes earning a poor grade to the teacher's poor teaching ability or unfair test questions might be exhibiting a self-serving bias. Studies have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-deception
Self-deception or self-delusion is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception. Brief history While Freudian analysis of the conscious and the unconscious minds dominated the field, psychological scientists in the 1970s became curious about how those two seemingly separate worlds could work together. The lack of mechanistic models available to this line of research, led to the debate being unresolved. Later, the focus has been shifted to vision-related research in social psychology. Theorization Analysis The traditional paradigm of self-deception is modeled after ''interpersonal'' deception, where ''A'' intentionally gets ''B'' to believe some proposition ''p'', all the while knowing or believing truly ¬''p'' (not ''p''). Such deception is intentional a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scotomization
Scotomization is a psychological term for the mental blocking of unwanted perceptions, analogous to the visual blindness of an actual scotoma. Controversies This term initially was used by Charcot in connection with hysteria. Psychoanalysis Reviving in the 1920s this term, Rene Laforgue and Edouard Pichon introduced the idea of scotomization into psychoanalysis – a move initially welcomed by Freud in 1926 as a useful description of the hysterical avoidance of distressing perceptions. The following year, however, he attacked the term for suggesting that the perception was wholly blotted out (as with a retina's blind spot), whereas his clinical experience showed that on the contrary intense psychic measures had to be taken to keep the unwanted perception out of consciousness. A debate followed between Freud and Laforgue, further illuminated by Pichon's 1928 article on 'The Psychological Significance of Negation in French', where he argued that "The French language expr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reality Principle
In Freudian psychology and psychoanalysis, the reality principle () is the ability of the mind to assess the reality of the external world, and to act upon it accordingly, as opposed to acting according to the pleasure principle. The reality principle is the governing principle of the actions taken by the ego, after its slow development from a "pleasure-ego" into a "reality-ego". History Freud argued that "an ego thus educated has become 'reasonable'; it no longer lets itself be governed by the pleasure principle, but obeys the reality principle, which also, at bottom, seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished". In his introductory lectures of 1915, at the University of Vienna, Freud popularized the concept of the unconscious as the largest and most influential part of the mind, including those drives, instincts and motives humans are often forced to deny except in disguised f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Positivity Offset
In psychology, the positivity offset is a phenomenon where people tend to interpret neutral situations as mildly positive, and rate their lives as good, most of the time. The positivity offset stands in notable asymmetry to the negativity bias. Similarities and differences to Negativity Bias Two studies were presented within a single study that looked at the difference between positivity offset and negative bias to see if it is good or bad for some people. The first study measured an individual’s reactions to different stimuli such as pictures, sounds, and words. The results from this study have also seen evidence, in comparison to other studies, that the positivity offset is in favor of positive stimuli over negative stimuli. The opposite effect is true for negative bias. An interesting observation that was made in this study was that positivity offset and negative bias was predicted in different behaviors rather than from established measures focused on personality. The secon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Positivity Effect
The positivity effect is the ability to constructively analyze a situation where the desired results are not achieved, but still obtain positive feedback that assists one's future progression. Empirical research findings suggest that the positivity effect can be influenced by internal positive speech, where engaging in constructive self-dialogue can significantly improve one’s ability to perceive and react to challenging situations more optimistically. The findings of a study show that the optimism bias in future-oriented thinking fulfils a self-improvement purpose while also suggesting this bias probably reflects a common underpinning motivational process across various future-thinking domains, either episodic or semantic. In attribution The positivity effect as an attribution phenomenon relates to the habits and characteristics of people when evaluating the causes of their behaviors. To positively attribute is to be open to attributing a person’s inherent disposition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Overconfidence Effect
The overconfidence effect is a well-established bias in which a person's subjective ''confidence'' in their judgments is reliably greater than the objective ''accuracy'' of those judgments, especially when confidence is relatively high. Overconfidence is one example of a miscalibration of subjective probabilities. Throughout the research literature, overconfidence has been defined in three distinct ways: (1) ''overestimation'' of one's actual performance; (2) ''overplacement'' of one's performance relative to others; and (3) ''overprecision'' in expressing unwarranted certainty in the accuracy of one's beliefs. The most common way in which overconfidence has been studied is by asking people how confident they are of specific beliefs they hold or answers they provide. The data show that confidence systematically exceeds accuracy, implying people are more sure that they are correct than they deserve to be. If human confidence had perfect calibration, judgments with 100% confidence w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optimism Bias
Optimism bias or optimistic bias is a cognitive bias that causes someone to believe that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event. It is also known as unrealistic optimism or comparative optimism. It is common and transcends gender, ethnicity, nationality, and age. Autistic people are less susceptible to this kind of bias. It has also been reported in other animals, such as rats and birds. Four factors can cause a person to be optimistically biased: their desired end state, their cognitive mechanisms, the information they have about themselves versus others, and overall mood. The optimistic bias is seen in a number of situations. For example: people believing that they are less at risk of being a crime victim, smokers believing that they are less likely to contract lung cancer or disease than other smokers, first-time bungee jumpers believing that they are less at risk of an injury than other jumpers, or traders who think they are less exposed to potential l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Illusory Superiority
In social psychology, illusory superiority is a cognitive bias wherein people overestimate their own qualities and abilities compared to others. Illusory superiority is one of many positive illusions, relating to the self, that are evident in the study of intelligence, the effective performance of tasks and tests, and the possession of desirable personal characteristics and personality traits. Overestimation of abilities compared to an objective measure is known as the ''overconfidence effect''. The term "illusory superiority" was first used by the researchers Van Yperen and Buunk, in 1991. The phenomenon is also known as the above-average effect, the superiority bias, the leniency error, the sense of relative superiority, the ''primus inter pares'' effect, and the Lake Wobegon effect, named after the fictional town where all the children are above average. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a form of illusory superiority shown by people on a task where their level of skill is low ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Depressive Realism
Depressive realism is the hypothesis developed by Lauren Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abramson that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals. Although depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias that results in recurrent, negative automatic thoughts, maladaptive behaviors, and dysfunctional world beliefs, depressive realism argues not only that this negativity may reflect a more accurate appraisal of the world but also that non-depressed individuals' appraisals are positively biased. Evidence for When participants were asked to press a button and rate the control they perceived they had over whether or not a light turned on, depressed individuals made more accurate ratings of control than non-depressed individuals. Among participants asked to complete a task and rate their performance without any feedback, depressed individuals made more accurate self-ratings than non-depressed individuals. For participants asked to com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
