On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Miles Jackson wrote:
>
> >I cut my academic teeth in grad school on the cog diss literature.
>
> A friend of mine wanted to write his psychology diss about
> self-deception, but gave up because it was just too hard and he
> wanted to graduate, so he picked something geeky & easier. That was
> 20 years ago - anyone done anything on that since? It sounds like
> such a tempting topic.
>
> Doug
>
Oh yeah. About 70-80% of people consider themselves well above average compared to peers on a variety of positive attributes (leadership, creativity, helpfulness, etc). Moreover, as well as can be demonstrated in nonexperimental research, this kind of rose-tinted perception of self seems to effectively reduce the risk of both psychological disorders like depression and a variety of physical diseases (e.g, heart disease and stroke). People who have a more realistic or outright pessimistic view of themselves are far more likely to have both psychological and physical health problems.
So most of us are full of ourselves, and damn good thing, too.
Miles