Highlights
• Largest sample size for multi-method studies of self-enhancement.
• No support for benefits of positive illusions on wellbeing.
• Multi-method evidence that personality influences well-being.
Abstract: This article uses multi-rater data from 458 triads (students, mother, father, total N = 1374) to examine the relationship of personality ratings with wellbeing ratings, using a multi-method approach to separate accurate perceptions (shared across raters) from biased perceptions of the self (rater-specific variance). The social-psychological perspective predicts effects of halo bias in self-ratings on wellbeing, whereas the personality-psychological perspective predicts effects of personality traits on wellbeing. Results are more consistent with the personality perspective in that neuroticism (negative), extraversion, agreeableness, and to a lesser extent conscientiousness predicted wellbeing, whereas positive illusions about the self were only weakly and not significantly related to wellbeing. These results cast doubt on the hypothesis that self-enhancement is beneficial for wellbeing.
4. Discussion
The main contribution of this article was to examine wellbeing from an integrated personality and social psychological perspective. While personality psychologists focused on the contribution of actual traits, social psychologists focused on biases in self-perceptions of traits. Multi-method measurement models were used to separate valid trait variance from illusory perceptions of personality in self-ratings and ratings of other family members. The results show that actual personality traits are more important for wellbeing than positive biases in self-perceptions. In fact, the most important finding was that positive illusions about the self were unrelated to wellbeing impressions that are shared across informants. This finding challenges Taylor and Brown (1988) influential and highly controversial claim that positive illusions not only foster higher wellbeing, but are a sign of optimal and normal functioning. Subsequently, we discuss the implications of our findings for the future of wellbeing science and for individuals’ pursuit of wellbeing.
4.1. Positive illusions and public wellbeing
The social psychological perspective on wellbeing is grounded in the basic assumption that human information processing is riddled with errors. Taylor and Brown (1988) quote Fiske and Taylor (1984) book about social cognitions to support this assumption. “Instead of a naïve scientist entering the environment in search of the truth, we find the rather unflattering picture of a charlatan trying to make the data come out in a manner most advantageous to his or her already-held theories” (p. 88). Thirty years later, it has become apparent that human information processing is more accurate than Fiske and Taylor (1984) assumed (Funder, 1995, Jussim, 1991, McCrae and Costa, 1991, Schimmack and Oishi, 2005). Thus, Taylor and Brown (1988) model of wellbeing is based on outdated evidence and needs to be revised.
The vast majority of studies have relied on self-ratings of wellbeing to measure benefits of wellbeing. This is problematic because self-ratings of wellbeing can be inflated by the very same processes that inflate self-ratings of personality (Humberg et al., 2019). There have been only a handful of studies with valid illusion measures and informant ratings of wellbeing and these studies have found similar weak results (Dufner et al., 2019).
The lack of evidence for benefits of positive illusions is not for a lack of trying. Taylor, Lerner, Sherman, Sage, and McDowell (2003) claimed that effects of positive illusions are not limited to self-ratings. “We conducted a study with multiple measures of self-enhancement along with multiple measures and judges of mental health, comprehensively assessing their relationship. The results indicated that self-enhancement is positively associated with multiple indicators of mental health” (p. 165). Contrary to this claim, Table 5 shows correlations of various self-enhancement measures with peer-rated mental health ranging from r = −0.13 to 0.09. None of these correlations were significant, in part due to the low statistical power of the study (N = 55). Thus, even Taylor and colleagues never provided positive evidence that positive illusions increase wellbeing in ways that can be measured with a method other than self-reports. The social cognitive model of wellbeing also faces other problems. One problem is causality. Even if there were a small correlation between positive illusions about the self and wellbeing, it is not clear that it is causal. It is equally plausible that happiness distorts self-perceptions. Thirty years of research have failed to address this problem (cf. Humberg et al., 2019). Another problem is that third variables produce a spurious correlation between illusions about the self and wellbeing. For example, relationship researchers have shown that illusions about a partner predict relationship satisfaction (see Weidmann, Ledermann, & Grob, 2016, for a review), and Kim et al. (2012) showed that individuals with positive illusions about the self also tend to have positive illusions about others. Thus, it is possible that positive illusions about others, not the self, are beneficial for social relationships and wellbeing. Future research needs to include measures of positive illusions about the self and others to examine this question. Given these problems, we question broad conclusions about the benefits of positive illusions for wellbeing (Dufner et al., 2019; Humberg et al., 2019).
4.2. Positive illusions and private wellbeing
The present study replicated the finding that positive illusions predict unique variance in self-ratings of wellbeing. That is, individuals who claim to be more extraverted and more agreeable than others perceive them also claim to be happier than others perceive them to be (Dufner et al., 2019, Humberg et al., 2019; Taylor et al., 2003). As noted in the introduction, there are two possible explanation for this finding. One explanation is that positive illusions enhance wellbeing in a way that is not observable to others. The challenge for this model is to explain how positive illusions foster private wellbeing and to provide empirical evidence for this model. To explain why informants are unable to see the happiness of individuals with positive illusions, we have to assume that the illusion-based happiness is not visible to others. This requires a careful examination of the variance in self-ratings of wellbeing that is not shared with informants (Schneider & Schimmack, 2010).
The private-wellbeing illusion model also faces an interesting contradiction in assumptions about the validity of personality and wellbeing judgments. To allow for effects of positive illusions on private wellbeing, the model assumes that people have illusions about their personality, while their self-ratings of wellbeing are highly accurate and trustworthy. In contrast, social psychologists have argued that wellbeing judgments are highly sensitive to context effects and provide little valid information about individuals’ wellbeing (Schwarz & Strack, 1999). In contrast, personality psychologists have pointed to self-informant agreement in wellbeing judgments as evidence for the validity of self-ratings of wellbeing. If informant ratings validate self-ratings, then we would expect predictors of wellbeing also to be related to self-ratings of wellbeing and to informant ratings of wellbeing. Our main contribution is to show that this is not the case for positive illusions, or at least, that the effect size is small. No single study can resolve deep philosophical questions, but our study suggests that hundreds of studies that relied on self-ratings of wellbeing to demonstrate the benefits of positive illusions may have produced illusory evidence of these benefits.
4.3. Positive illusions as halo bias
Evidence for halo biases in personality ratings is nearly 100 years old (Thorndike, 1920). Ironically, some of the strongest evidence for the pervasiveness of halo biases stems from social psychology (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Given the evidence that halo biases in ratings are pervasive, halo bias provides a simple and parsimonious explanation for the finding that positive illusions are only related to the unique variance in self-ratings and not to informant ratings of wellbeing. One explanation for halo bias is that many trait concepts have a denotative and a connotative (evaluative) meaning (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957). While denotative meaning and valid information produce agreement between raters, ratings are also biased by the connotative meaning of words and liking of a target. For example, lazy has a denotative meaning of not putting a lot of effort into tasks and a negative connotation. Ratings of laziness will be enhanced by dislike and attenuated by liking of an individual independent of the objective effort targets exert (Leising, Erbs, & Fritz, 2010). It seems plausible that halo bias also influences ratings of desirable attributes like happiness and having a good life. Thus, halo bias offers a plausible explanation for our results that is also consistent with heuristic and bias models in social psychology.
4.4. Personality and wellbeing
The present study provided new evidence on the relationship between personality and wellbeing from a multi-rater perspective. Results confirmed that neuroticism is the strongest predictor of wellbeing and that the influence on wellbeing is mediated by hedonic balance. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that neuroticism is a broad disposition to experience more unpleasant mood states (Costa and McCrae, 1980, Schimmack, Radhakrishnan, Oishi et al., 2002, Watson and Tellegen, 1985). As experiencing unpleasant mood is undesirable it lowers wellbeing independent of actual life-circumstances. Twin studies suggest that individual differences in neuroticism are partially heritable and that the genetic variance in neuroticism accounts for a considerable portion of the shared variance between neuroticism and wellbeing (Nes et al., 2013).
In comparison, the other personality traits explain relatively small amounts of variance in wellbeing. While, the effects of extraversion and agreeableness were also mediated by hedonic balance, the results for conscientiousness suggested a unique influence on life evaluations. Future research needs to go beyond demonstrating effects of the Big Five and wellbeing and start to investigate the causal processes that link personality to wellbeing. McCrae and Costa (1991) proposed that agreeableness is beneficial for more harmonious social relationships, while conscientiousness is beneficial for work, but there have been few attempts to test these predictions. One way to test potential mediators are integrated top-down bottom-up models with domain satisfaction as mediators (Brief et al., 1993, Schimmack, Diener, Oishi, 2002). It is important to use multi-method measurement models to separate top-down effects from halo bias (Schneider & Schimmack, 2010). It is also important to examine the relationship of personality and wellbeing with a more detailed assessment of personality traits. While the Big Five have the advantage of covering a broad range of personality traits with a few, largely orthogonal dimensions, the disadvantage is that they cannot represent all of the variation in personality. Some studies showed that the depression facet of neuroticism and the cheerfulness facet of extraversion explain additional variance in wellbeing (Allik et al., 2018, Schimmack et al., 2004). More research with narrow personality traits is needed to specify the precise personality traits that are related to wellbeing.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment