positive illusion

a belief about oneself that is pleasant or positive and that is held regardless of its truth. The most common positive illusions involve exaggerating one’s good traits (see beneffectance), overestimating one’s degree of control over personally important events (see illusion of control), and sustaining unrealistic optimism (see repressive coping style).

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Psychology term of the day

December 24th 2024

phonics

1. a method of teaching reading, popularly known as sounding out, that concentrates on the sounds of the letters or letter combinations in a word rather than on the word as a unit. The speaker or reader thus tries to match graphemes and phonemes. Also called phonic method. Compare whole-word method.

2. a former name for acoustics.