BazermanMoore

Positive Illusions 93
individual’s positive sense of self (Taylor & Brown, 1988, 1994). In addition, Taylor
and Brown argue that positive illusions increase personal commitment, help individuals
persist at difficult tasks, and facilitate coping with aversive and uncontrollable
events.
Certainly, it is reasonable to argue that positive illusions help to create entrepreneurs
who are willing to discount risks. Positive illusions allow us to maintain cognitive
consistency, belief in a just world, and perceived control (Greenwald, 1980). Seligman
(1991) advocates the selection of salespeople based on the magnitude of their positive
illusion—what he calls ‘‘learned optimism.’’ He argues that unrealistically high levels of
optimism bolster sales-force persistence.
We believe that each of these findings is true and that in some specific situations
(e.g., severe health conditions), positive illusions may prove beneficial. In addition, positive
illusions may help people cope with tragic events, particularly when they have few
alternatives and are not facing any major decisions. However, we also believe that this
adaptive story is incomplete—and, indeed, dangerous in most decision-making environments.
Every day, people invest their life savings in new businesses that have little
chance of success. Similarly, falsely assuming that they are irreplaceable, people make
ultimatums to their employers and end up losing their jobs.
Much of the evidence suggesting that positive illusions are adaptive shares a serious
problem: the studies do not measure illusions in predictions of future outcomes,
but instead pick up on accuracy in self-assessment (Klein & Steers-Wentzell, 2005).
These studies measure people’s belief that they are likely to be better off than others
(with respect to the severity of their cancer, their chances of career success, and so on)
and then go on to show that those who believe they are better off do in fact wind up
being better off. The simple explanation for these results is that people have an accurate
sense of how bad their cancer is or what their career prospects are. Indeed, evidence
suggests that high self-esteem is more likely to be a result of prior success rather
than a cause of it (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003).
By contrast, positive illusions are hazardous (and even self-negating) when they
cause people to temporarily fool themselves into believing that they are better than
they are. In a study of college students, Robins and Beer (2001) found that positive
illusions are associated with higher levels of self-reported well-being and self-esteem in
the short term. But, over time, individuals become frustrated as they encounter evidence
that their academic performance is not as good as they think (see also McGraw,
Mellers, & Ritov, 2004). Positive illusions can lead people to behave in ways that are
arrogant, careless, and self-centered (Anderson, Srivastava, Beer, Spataro, & Chatman,
2006; Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003). Positive illusions can actually
undermine effort and performance (Stone, 1994). Those who engage in the most selfserving
reasoning are also more likely to engage in cheating, in part because they are
better at justifying the behavior to themselves (von Hippel, Lakin, & Shakarchi, 2005).
Our cynicism about the adaptive role of positive illusions is shared by a number of
scholars who caution that positive illusions are likely to have a negative impact on learning
and on the quality of decision making, personnel decisions, and responses to crises
(e.g., ‘‘global warming isn’t that bad’’), and can contribute to conflict and discontent
(Brodt, 1990; Dunning, Heath, & Suls, 2004; Kramer, 1994; Tyler & Hastie, 1991).