Optimism and Love

Recently I have become interested in the effects of optimism on relationship satisfaction. Unrealistic optimism about romantic relationships is very widespread. Even people who are aware of divorce rates in the society in which they live tend to overestimate the longevity of their relationships.

Unrealistically optimistic predictions about the future of our romantic relationships may be supported by other positive illusions, for instance, the superiority illusion and the love-is-blind illusion. According to the superiority illusion, which is a form of self-enhancement, we tend to perceive our relationship as better than most relationships. According to the love-is-blind illusion, we tend to be blind to our partner’s faults, and perceive the partner as better than average in a number of domains including intelligence and attractiveness.

But for Murray and colleagues (1996) such illusions are not obviously a bad thing, as people who have an optimistic disposition towards the future and idealise their partners have more satisfying and longer lasting relationships, where conflicts are resolved more effectively.

According to the ‘self-fulfillment’ model they endorse, positivity has three main effects:

partners are protected from the potentially disruptive effects of conflict and doubt;
people deal with problems effectively and see the bright side in their partners’ faults;
people live up to the high standards of their idealising partners, increasing their sense of their own self-worth and coming to perceive themselves as positively as their partners do.

The empirical results discussed by Murray and colleagues support the self-fulfillment model: idealised conceptions of our partners help us overcome difficulties and are much better related to wellbeing and relationship satisfaction and stability (even in the long term) than more realistic evaluations. Satisfaction mediates the link between positive illusions and stability.

Moreover, in the long run, due to the self-fulfilling nature of positive evaluations, the gap between idealisation and reality shrinks, and people start manifesting those qualities that partners always attributed to them. So it would seem that happiness in love does not always come at the expense of knowledge...

I will discuss optimism, love and agency at the British Society for the Philosophy of Science annual conference in Cardiff this Friday.

Delusions in the DSM 5

This post is by Lisa Bortolotti. How has the definition of delusions changed in the DSM 5? Here are some first impressions. In the DSM-IV (Glossary) delusions were defined as follows: Delusion. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility.

Motivated Reasoning in Science

Today's post is by Josh May (University of Alabama, Birmingham). In this post, he talks about one of his papers published in Synthese and entitled " Bias in Science ". Josh May Much discussion of the replication crisis in science has focused on the social sciences, particularly psychology. A common narrative is that the social sciences are particularly susceptible to powerful biases, such as moral and political ideology. I argue instead for a parity thesis: all areas of science are subject to bias, through the general psychological mechanism of motivated reasoning . This provides a unified framework for understanding how values influence the entire scientific enterprise. The scientific process involves numerous decisions that can be influenced by one's values--including moral, political, and prudential values--which manifest as goals or motivations. A researcher wants badly, say, to publish in a prestigious journal in order to either advance her career or maintain ...

Models of Madness

In today's post John Read (in the picture above) presents the recent book he co-authored with Jacqui Dillon , titled Models of Madness: Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Psychosis. My name is John Read. After 20 years working as a Clinical Psychologist and manager of mental health services in the UK and the USA, mostly with people experiencing psychosis, I joined the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1994. There I published over 100 papers in research journals, primarily on the relationship between adverse life events (e.g., child abuse/neglect, poverty etc.) and psychosis. I also research the negative effects of bio-genetic causal explanations on prejudice, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry in mental health. In February I moved to Melbourne and I now work at Swinburne University of Technology. I am on the on the Executive Committee of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis and am the Editor...

Imperfect Cognitions

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