Like many forms of human perception, self-perception is prone to
illusion. Positive illusions have been commonly understood as one of the
apparent effects of self-enhancement, a desire to maximize the positivity of one's self-views[14] and a function of boosting self-esteem. It might be due to the desire to see oneself more favorably relative to one's peers.[15] These kinds of self-serving attributions seemed to be displayed by positive self-viewers only. In fact, the negative-viewers were found to display the opposite pattern.[16] Research suggests that there may be modest genetic contributions to the ability to develop positive illusions[17][vague]
Early environment also plays an important role: people are more able to
develop these positive beliefs in nurturing environments than in harsh
ones.[citation needed]
Alternative explanations involve dimensions like the easiness and
commonness of the tasks. In addition, tasks that shifted attention from
the self to the comparative target would stop people overly optimising.[18]
The cultural prevalence also has a significant role in positive
illusions. Although it is easy to document positive illusions in
individualistic Western cultures, people in collectivist East Asian
cultures are much less likely to self-enhance and, indeed, are often
self-effacing instead.[19]
Most studies find that people tend to have inflated views of
themselves. The research indicates that the relationship between
people's self-evaluations and objective assessments is relatively weak.
One explanation for this is that most people only have mild positive
illusions.[20]
However, according to recent studies there is evidence that there are
significant individual differences between the strength of positive
illusions people have. Therefore some people may have extremely inflated
self-views, some mild and some very little and when examined across a
population this effect appears weak.[21]
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