Talk:Positive illusions

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 September 2019 and 18 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Westernvillage.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Ways to improve article tone

I'm glad to see the recent massive expansion of the article by an anonymous author. There's lots of great scholarly content. However, the tone needs to be brought in line with Wikipedia style. Firstly, it needs to avoid "you". It also needs to avoid questions such as "Can positive illusions be learned?". Headings or subheadings serve the purpose of introducing sections: you do not need these questions as well. Some writing styles benefit from this informal, conversational style, but it's not encyclopedic.

Also, when adding material, please don't remove useful existing content such as tags. Thanks, MartinPoulter (talk) 13:18, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Source for this article

• {{cite journal|last=Fischer|first=Peter|coauthors=Tobias Greitemeyer, Dieter Frey|date=2007|title=Ego Depletion and Positive Illusions: Does the Construction of Positivity Require Regulatory Resources?|journal=Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin|publisher=Society for Personality and Social Psychology|volume=33|issue=9|pages=1306-1321|issn=1552-7433| url=http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/33/9/1306 |doi=10.1177/0146167207303025}}

This could do with a very brief summary in the section on reducing the illusion. MartinPoulter (talk) 13:44, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

First Sentence

I think the current first sentence - when seen as the definition of 'positive illusions' as implied by sentence 2 - may have inaccurate implications:

"People often hold beliefs about themselves, the world, and the future which are more positive than reality can sustain. These beliefs, as first termed by Taylor and Brown (1988), are called positive illusions."

Specifically, 'MORE positive than reality can sustain' implies that really can sustain some level of positive illusion. If positive illusions at those levels exist, why are they being excluded from the definition? I also contend, independent of the sentence's semantics, that sustainable positive illusions can and do exist. I recommend rewording this to read:

"People often hold positive beliefs about themselves, the world, and the future which are incongruent with reality."

I am not making this change myself because I am unfamiliar with Wikipedia's editing guidelines: I've just signed up to comment here. Also, being in Iraq, I believe the IP range I fall in may be blocked.

Goldenfetus (talk) 20:41, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I should have replied at the time, but this was a good point, and this is why the lead now introduces positive illusions as "unrealistically favorable attitudes". MartinPoulter (talk) 21:42, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

A removed source that could be reused

I've removed the following ref because its summary in the article was nonsensical, and I'm not at a university computer now so I can't access the text of the paper to summarise it. The paper is interesting though and still belongs in the article as a reference.

• {{cite journal | last1 = Reed | first1 = G.M. | year = 1999 | title = Negative HIV-specific expectancies and AIDS-related bereavement as predictors of symptom onset in asymptomatic HIV-positive gay men | url = | journal = Health Psychology | volume = 18 | issue = 4| pages = 354–363 |display-authors = 1 | doi = 10.1037/0278-6133.18.4.354 | pmid = 10431936 | last2 = Kemeny | first2 = ME| last3 = Taylor | first3 = SE | last4 = Visscher | first4 = BR }}

MartinPoulter (talk) 21:39, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

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