The Role of Positive Illusions in Transylvanian Hungarians' Mental Health

Contrary to traditional theories according to which a mentally healthy person has realistic perceptions, a new paradigm, still in formation, claims that positively biased perceptions are general, and that they are a condition of mental health. This tendency of ours to see ourselves and the world as if “through rose-coloured spectacles” has been labelled in psychological literature as “positive illusions”. Cross cultural studies have, however, revealed that positive illusions depend on the cultural background. The objective of the present paper is to investigate positive illusions of the Transylvanian Hungarian population, studying at the same time the relationship between positive illusions and mental health on the general non-clinical adult population.

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