Exploring the (Mal)adaptive Consequences of Self-Deceptive Enhancement: A Narrative Review

meta-analytic


Introduction
Te tendency for people to view themselves in an unrealistically favorable light, termed self-deceptive enhancement (SDE) and closely related to the broader construct of positive illusions, is a well-documented phenomenon [1,2].While it is hard to ascertain the level of intentionality with which people hold such positively distorted self-views, the common assumption is that holding such views must serve an adaptive function of some kind; otherwise, it would not be such a pervasive phenomenon [3].On the other hand, some have argued that indulging in SDE can leave us ill-equipped for dealing with reality, thus leading to maladaptive consequences [4].
Given that one of the chief aims of psychology is to alleviate psychological sufering and enhance well-being, it is important to understand whether SDE plays a role in exacerbating or relieving psychological distress and, if the latter, under what circumstances and at what cost to overall well-being.Yet, despite decades of research and debate, including eforts to monetarily quantify the costs of SDE in areas like gambling and war [5], there remains a lack of consensus within the feld about the adaptiveness or maladaptiveness of such positively distorted self-views.To our knowledge, the most recent and comprehensive efort to resolve this debate empirically was a meta-analysis by Dufner et al. [6] who examined the efects of selfenhancement (i.e., "the tendency to maintain unrealistically positive self-views"; p. 48) on personal adjustment (defned as "the proclivity to feel happy rather than sad or depressed"; p. 50) and interpersonal adjustment (defned as "the extent to which people are valued"; p. 58).Dufner et al.'s meta-analytic review was impressively thorough, and pooling efect sizes from 299 studies (totaling over 120,000 participants) were published in peer-reviewed journals anytime through November 2014.Teir fndings showed a robust positive association between self-enhancement and personal adjustment, regardless of which of several common ways each of these variables was operationalized.Te fndings for interpersonal adjustment were more nuanced, with greater self-enhancement predicting more positive social evaluations at initial but not longer-term acquaintance, and diferent forms of self-enhancement predicting more positive versus negative informant evaluations in diferent interpersonal domains.Dufner et al.'s [6] conclusion was that self-enhancement is straightforwardly good for personal adjustment but may be a double-edged sword with regard to interpersonal adjustment.
Despite the thoroughness and rigor of Dufner et al.'s [6] meta-analysis, however, there were several important omissions.First and foremost, their narrow focus on subjective well-being and depressive symptoms as exclusive indicators of "personal adjustment" omitted a wide range of outcomes that are arguably as or more indicative of one's overall psychological functioning-such as the extent to which one learns and grows through experience, problemsolves and makes progress with respect to one's valued goals, behaves ethically with important others, engages in potentially self-destructive behavior such as alcohol and substance use, or shows resilience in the face of trauma and stress.Such outcomes form a vital part of any organismic theory of human fourishing [7], and they have all been theoretically implicated as potential casualties of SDE [8][9][10][11].Second, they excluded clinical samples, which greatly limited the scope of evidence of the potential negative consequences of SDE and its associated clinical implications.Lastly, their meta-analysis did not include studies published after 2014.Tis narrative review aims to help fll these gaps, thus providing a conceptual and empirical update to the fndings of Dufner et al. [6].

Weighing the Pros and Cons of SDE: An Updated Review of the Empirical Literature
Te present review surveys and synthesizes empirical evidence of the positive and negative functional consequences of SDE, excluding those fndings previously reviewed by Dufner et al. [6], to clarify the complex role of this phenomenon as it relates to psychological health and well-being and to explore its potential clinical relevance.
A literature search was conducted to identify quantitative studies that examined the adaptiveness or maladaptiveness of SDE, conceptualized as unrealistically favorable self-views.Te searches were conducted on Psy-chINFO and PubMed using the search terms "selfdeception," "self-deceptive enhancement," "selfenhancement," "positive illusions," and "positive illusory bias" in combination with terms relating to mental health and well-being (e.g., "adaptive," "adjustment," "health," "benefts of," "relationship satisfaction," "self-esteem"), psychopathology (e.g., "depression," "anxiety," "mental illness"), and maladaptiveness (i.e., "negative outcomes," "cost of") to fnd empirical studies from peer-reviewed journals.Contrary to Dufner et al., we excluded more distal operationalizations of "positive illusions," such as optimism, arrogance, self-love, and narcissism, which muddy or dilute the specifc construct of "positive illusions." Studies conducted prior to February 2019 were included in this review.Studies that proposed models or mechanisms by which positive illusions are held but did not directly investigate the functional correlates or consequences of positive illusions were not included.Studies published in a language other than English for which no English translation was available were also not included.As a result, a total of 53 studies were identifed and included in this review, 25 of which support the adaptiveness of SDE, 27 of which support the maladaptiveness of SDE, and two that report mixed fndings.

Commonly Used Measures of SDE.
Te most common measure used in the reviewed studies was the Self-Deceptive Enhancement subscale of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding [12].Derived from the older Self-Deception Questionnaire [13], the BIDR-SDE consists of 20 Likert-scale items thought to capture nearuniversal but unfattering aspects of the human experience (e.g., "I am a completely rational person," "My frst impressions about people always turn out to be right").Lower ratings on these items are interpreted as indicating a higher rate of self-deceptive enhancement [12].Te BIDR-SDE has been shown to have satisfactory internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and scale score validity [14].
More recently developed measures of self-deception include the Self-Deception and Mystifcation Inventory (IAM-40) [15] and its short form, the Self-Deception Questionnaire-12 (SDQ-12) [16], which both take a more direct, face-valid approach to capturing self-deception.Te IAM-40 is comprised of 40 items that represent fve factors related to "pathological self-deception" (i.e., insincerity, manipulation, denial mechanisms, interest in accurate perception of reality, and mystifcation).For example, items include "I do not seem to learn from certain mistakes I make in my life," "It takes me a while to become aware of certain key issues in my life," and "Honestly, I am one for changing things for my own convenience."Both the IAM-40 and SDQ-12 have been shown to have good internal consistency [15,16].
Te strengths of these commonly used measures lie in their internal consistency, ease of administration, and in the case of the BIDR, widespread use.However, it is worth noting the possibility of capturing false positives for selfdeception using these measures (e.g., individuals who truly possess elevated levels of a desired characteristic) as well as false negatives on face valid measures like the IAM-40 (due to self-presentation concerns).
What follows is a review of the SDE literature not included in [6] divided into evidence of adaptiveness and maladaptiveness, each organized by themes that emerged (see Table 1 for a list of all studies reviewed with specifc SDE measures used in each study).We end with a discussion 2 Journal of Teoretical Social Psychology  [12]; EPI lie scale � eysenck personality inventory lie scale [66]; HSM � how i see myself questionnaire [58]; IAM � self-deception and mystifcation inventory [15]; LOT � life orientation test [67]; PDS � paulhus deception scales [68]; responses to HIV � responses to HIV questionnaire, realistic acceptance factor [51]; SDS � Marlowe-Crowne social desirability scale [69]; SDQ � self-deception questionnaire [13].
Journal of Teoretical Social Psychology about the implications of these fndings as they relate to clinical practice.[52] found that when asked to rate their past, present, and future selves on representative statements, people were most self-enhancing when thinking about their futures (a temporal state that is inherently more ambiguous than the past or present), envisioning unrealistically optimistic outcomes compared to their past or present experiences.Te future self was not only rated most positively but also on happiness, self-esteem, and life satisfaction subscales.Similarly, in examining the self-protective function of SDE, both Beauregard and Dunning's [17] and Wakeman et al.'s [62] studies found that greater selfenhancement in response to a self-esteem-threatening event was associated with more positive self-evaluations relevant to the threat.More generally, SDE appears to play a role in the maintenance of self-esteem and adjustment.

Te Adaptiveness of
Several studies [17,19,32] found that individuals with selfreported high self-esteem demonstrated a greater tendency to self-enhance in the form of self-other bias (i.e., the tendency to describe oneself as better than others) than individuals with low self-esteem.In line with Dufner et al.'s [6] fndings, Humberg et al. [27] found that individuals with self-favoring views of their intelligence and vocabulary were also better intrapersonally and adjusted; however, in terms of interpersonal adjustment, outcomes associated with SDE were mixed (see Social Costs of SDE section).SDE has also been linked to confdence, but this efect peaked at moderate levels of SDE, and those with higher SDE actually experienced a decrease in confdence following disconfrming feedback compared to those with low SDE who experienced no change in confdence following confrming or disconfrming feedback [42].

SDE and
Coping with Trauma.It has been shown that higher self-enhancement is associated with signifcantly less self-reported distress in response to potentially traumatic events [24] and overall better adjustment in response to the death of a spouse [65].In both studies, high self-enhancers were rated as better copers in anonymous ratings by their friends or relatives.

SDE as a Protective Factor against Psychopathology.
Te phenomenon of depressive realism was originally demonstrated by Alloy and Abramson [70] wherein depressed individuals were shown to make more accurate contingency judgments compared to nondepressed individuals who made positively biased contingency judgments, leading some to take these fndings as indirect support for the adaptive, mood-boosting benefts of positive illusions.Supporting this logic, several studies have found and replicated a negative association between SDE and depressive symptomatology [26,43,49,53,57].Looking more specifcally at body image, Tester and Gleaves [60] found that SDE moderated the relationship between awareness and internalization of the thin ideal among female undergraduate students.Based on these fndings, they suggested that high levels of SDE may serve as a protective factor against internalization of sociocultural pressures to be thin, potentially protecting against the development of eating disorders.

Social Benefts of SDE.
Te socially adaptive functions of positive illusions were a prominent theme within the literature reviewed, particularly from an evolutionary psychology perspective.Evolutionary psychologists view selfdeception as an adaptive advantage in that it enables efective deception of others, thereby protecting the self-deceiver from potential social and physical costs of unconvincing attempts at deception and conferring him with the potential social and material benefts of successful lying [3].Supporting this evolutionary psychology perspective, Lamba and Nityananda [33] found that high self-enhancers were overrated in their academic performance by peers (as determined by individuals' actual grade/rank versus academic performance predicted by peers), whereas underconfdent individuals were judged by their peers to be worse of academically than they actually were.(However, they note the potential negative consequences for systems and institutions that reward the overconfdence of high self-enhancers, who are likely more risk-prone.)Similarly, Smith et al. [54] found an association between SDE and the deception of others using a persuasion task to capture self-deception and deception.Tey found that people who were fnancially motivated to persuade another person in a particular direction later demonstrated a self-deceptive information processing bias consistent with their persuasive goals (i.e., participants who were told to persuade others of a target's likeability later found the target more likable than those whose goal was to persuade others of his unlikability) [54].Additionally, they found that this processing bias was a signifcant predictor of persuasiveness, in line with the evolutionary hypothesis described above.Another social beneft of SDE posited in the evolutionary psychology literature is its hypothesized role in facilitating prosocial behavior.Otter and Egan [46] found that SDE (as measured by the BIDR-SDE) was negatively associated with neuroticism and secondary psychopathy and positively associated with openness.Additionally, in their factor analysis of all measures in the study, they found that SDE loaded on the prosocial dimension of "careful cooperation" rather than the antisocial dimension of "careless noncooperation."Tus, SDE, in that it enables the maintenance of a positive selfimage, may act as a protective factor against antisocial thinking and behavior (which are more likely to be consequences of more accurate, negative self-appraisals) [46].
Relatedly, Lu and Chang [37] found a positive association between SDE and moral self-concept, which was moderated by private self-consciousness.Tey concluded that these fndings support the role of SDE in helping to dampen selfinterests in favor of more altruistic strivings to maintain a moral self-concept.
Tere also appear to be potential romantic relationship benefts of SDE.For example, it has been shown that SDE predicts intercourse-partner rate and partner status [38].Additionally, there is evidence that individuals see their partners in a more positive light than their partners see themselves and that these idealized constructions predict greater relationship satisfaction [44].In other words, individuals are happier in their relationships when they idealize their partners and their partners idealize them, suggesting that positive illusion may be a critical feature of satisfying romantic relationships.[58] investigated the efects of mindset (i.e., deliberative vs implemental) on positive illusions and goal-pursuit and found that postdecisional participants (i.e., those in an implemental mindset who had already selected a goal to pursue) focused their thoughts on issues of implementation and refected much less on pros and cons than did predecisional participants (i.e., those in the deliberative mindset who had not yet selected a goal).Furthermore, these implemental mindset participants showed a clear preference for thinking about the pros.Taylor and Gollwitzer [58] concluded that just as the realism that characterizes deliberative mindset is likely adaptive in helping people carefully make decisions about their lives, the positive bias that characterizes the postdecisional implemental mindset is likely adaptive in helping people maintain the motivation and efort necessary to achieve their goals.Similarly, Starek and Keating [55] found that swimmers who successfully qualifed for a national championship engaged in more SDE, suggesting that SDE may enhance motivation and performance during competition.

Physical Health Benefts of SDE.
Another theme within the literature is the physiological correlates of SDE.It has been shown that higher SDE is associated with lower cardiovascular responses to stress, lower baseline cortisol levels, faster cardiovascular recovery [59], less psychophysiological reactivity to novel tasks [61], and lower affective pain judgments of electric shocks [28].Te association between higher SDE and lower cortisol levels (which refect chronic functioning of the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the central stress response system) was mediated by greater psychological resources, like optimism and self-esteem [59], suggesting that positive illusions, by fostering psychological resources, may, in turn, foster lower HPA axis activity.Additionally, as possible indirect evidence of the health benefts of positive illusions, Reed et al. [51] found that realistic acceptance of illness among men with AIDS signifcantly predicted decreased survival time.

Te Maladaptiveness of SDE 2.3.1. Learning and Problem-Solving Costs of SDE.
Given that SDE or positive illusions involve a distortion or intentional neglect of undesirable information, it is not diffcult to see how this might interfere with learning.For example, Gramzow et al. [22] found that positive illusions about one's GPA were negatively associated with actual future academic performance.Similarly, several studies [20,36,71] using a clever experimental design demonstrated similar negative consequences of SDE for learning, such that individuals who had taken a test with a visible answer key predicted infated test scores on a subsequent test where no answer key would be visible.In the absence of SDE, the researchers reasoned that there would be no diference in predicted scores between the experimental group and control group (who had no answer key) because the experimental group would accurately take into account the boost in initial performance from the answer key that would no longer be available on the future test.However, as predicted, SDE did occur among the "answer key" group.Initial test scores were higher for this group, and individuals in this group also expected to perform better on the second test despite knowing they would not have an answer key.Tere was also a signifcant interaction between dispositional SDE and the experimental manipulation, such that dispositional self-enhancers were especially prone to taking credit for their answer-key-infated performance [20].Furthermore, it has been shown that monetary incentives for accurate predictions of performance on the second test do not temper SDE [4], and though corrective feedback can briefy lessen SDE [36], it can be easily reinstated [71].
In their investigation of the relationship between conscientiousness and learning in employee training, Martocchio and Judge [40] found that conscientious people tended to engage in SDE more than people low on conscientiousness and that SDE was negatively associated with learning.More specifcally, self-enhancers learned less than individuals who tended not to engage in SDE.Similarly, Lee and Klein [34] found that SDE was negatively associated with learning early in training; however, this negative efect dissipated over the 10-week training period.Tis trend may be due to the fact that the longer people are in training, the more opportunities they have to be confronted with consistent, corrective feedback (unlike the brief corrective provided in the previously mentioned studies), and the more challenging it becomes to maintain positive illusions.
Using a gambling card-playing task, Peterson et al.
[10] also demonstrated the negative efect of SDE on learning.Tey found that high self-enhancers showed greater response perseveration, often playing more cards and losing more money, despite the evidence of error and monetary loss.Furthermore, in their analysis of individuals who played until the end of the gambling task (i.e., played all their cards thereby losing all of their money), Peterson et al. [10] found that this group scored signifcantly higher on both SDE Journal of Teoretical Social Psychology measures used in the study.Similarly, Johnson et al. [29] found that after failure feedback on a bogus IQ test followed by solvable problem-solving tasks, greater SDE predicted worse problem-solving and greater hostility, controlling for the positive efects of self-esteem.Lastly, in their investigation of SDE and information processing, Peterson et al. [47] found that SDE had an adverse efect on task performance.Using a card-identifying task in which participants were shown and asked to identify familiar and anomalous playing cards, they found that while both low and high self-enhancers identifed the familiar cards rapidly and equally profciently, high self-enhancers took more than twice as many trials to identify the anomalous cards.Taken together, it seems that SDE, in that it involves discounting, distorting, or ignoring pertinent information that should be taken into account for efective problem-solving, can impede learning and performance.

Social Costs of SDE.
Tough SDE can be socially adaptive (see previous section social benefts of SDE), there is also evidence of its negative social consequences.For example, Humberg et al. [27] found that individuals with an infated view of their reasoning abilities were viewed more negatively by peers.Similarly, Norem [45] found that defensive self-enhancers were viewed by their own friends as signifcantly less modest, signifcantly less emotionally close to them, and marginally less likable than the nondefensive self-enhancers.Additionally, defensive self-enhancers perceived receiving less companionship and emotional support from their close friends.Tere is also evidence that selfenhancers are viewed as less credible when telling both truths and lies [64], contradicting fndings put forth by evolutionary psychologists that self-deception enables deception of others [33,54].

Moral and Ethical Costs of SDE.
It appears that positive illusions also have broader moral and ethical costs beyond just psychological and interpersonal consequences.For example, using a card identifcation task in which there was a monetary incentive and the possibility to cheat to increase earnings, Pittarello et al. [48] found that while cheating, participants allocated signifcantly less attention (operationalized using eye tracking) to undesirable information than when they behaved honestly.Pittarello et al. [48] concluded that when dishonesty is fnancially incentivized, turning attention away from undesirable information can be a self-deceptive strategy that enables people to serve their own self-interest while maintaining a positive self-image.Put diferently, SDE by means of attention diversion may enable unethical behavior, particularly where money is concerned.Similarly, Brookings and Serratelli [18] found that positive illusions, though they were positively associated with self-reported well-being, were negatively associated with moral reasoning.
(1) SDE and Violence.SDE may also play a role in enabling individuals to commit domestic violence while maintaining a positive sense of self.Marzana et al. [41] found that SDE (as measured by the SDE scale) fully mediated the relationship between moral absolutism (i.e., the belief in fxed, objective standards of right and wrong) and moral self-concept among men convicted of domestic violence.Te more these men felt confdent in their moral beliefs, the more they engaged in SDE, thereby maintaining their moral self-concept.Similarly, Vecina [11] found that men convicted of violence against a partner had high perceptions of their own morality, high levels of psychological well-being, high levels of moral absolutism, high levels of SDE, and high levels of sexism.
(2) SDE and Racism.One study within the literature under review highlighted a crucial consequence of SDE that is particularly relevant to the practice of psychotherapy.Gushue et al. [25] in their investigation of color-blind "postracial" attitudes (which negate the validity and reality of racism and its negative consequences) among white psychology trainees found that color-blind attitudes were associated with SDE.Given the sociopolitical climate of the past few years, which has included the rise in protests against police violence towards black and brown communities, increased anti-Asian discrimination and violence in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased public discourse around confronting racism on individual and systemic levels, these fndings are particularly salient and suggest that addressing SDE as it relates to racial attitudes should be a crucial part of training within the feld of psychology in order to support culturally sensitive, competent, and inclusive care for individuals from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

SDE and Psychopathology.
What is perhaps the most compelling evidence of the maladaptive nature of positive illusions comes from the clinical literature.Regarding psychopathology, SDE has been most extensively studied in the context of substance abuse disorders.For example, Strom and Barone [56] examined individuals in various stages of recovery and found that active abusers' selfreported positive beliefs about drinking control and selfesteem were associated with higher SDE.Additionally, early and late recoveries were both associated with signifcantly lower SDE.Similarly, Martínez-González et al. [39] found that substance dependence was associated with elevated scores of SDE and that SDE was negatively associated with duration of abstinence.Tey also found that substancedependent individuals with comorbid personality disorders displayed greater levels of SDE compared to individuals without a dual diagnosis, suggesting that SDE may be associated with more severe or persistent pathology.In a similar vein, Ferrari et al. [21] found that high selfenhancers reported using drugs (but not alcohol) on signifcantly more days than low self-enhancers did.Furthermore, they found that attending 12-step meetings was a signifcant predictor of less SDE and that high selfenhancers attended signifcantly fewer 12-step meetings than low self-deceivers.Tey concluded that 12-step programs, with their focus on reducing denial and selfdeception and increasing honesty, may be a crucial part of recovery.Taken together, it seems that SDE may play a role in the maintenance of substance use disorders.
Of note, although research examining the role of positive illusions in psychopathology has largely been limited to the substance use domain, there is evidence of associations between SDE and other forms of mental illness.Specifcally, Gudjonsson and Moore [23] investigated self-deception and other deception among patients at a maximum-security hospital and medium-security unit and found that SDE was associated with acute mental illness diagnoses as opposed to personality disorder diagnoses.Additionally, there is evidence that positive illusions are associated with higher depressive symptoms [30] and greater vulnerability to depression [31].[63] hypothesized that extremely low self-reported anxiety sensitivity (AS) may not actually represent "normal" psychological health but rather maladaptive defensive coping.In support of this hypothesis, they found that SDE was negatively associated with AS and that when presented with a hypothetical health problem, individuals with low AS were less likely to choose a task-oriented response and more likely to choose denial and self-deceptive responses compared to mid-and high-AS groups.In other words, rather than directly facing and dealing with a potential health problem, those with low AS were more likely to choose ego-defense strategies (denial) and egoenhancement strategies (SDE).

Conclusions, Hypotheses, and Future Directions
Tere is substantial evidence supporting both sides of the argument about the consequences of SDE.On the one hand, SDE appears to help individuals maintain a positive selfimage and high self-esteem, thereby facilitating a subjective experience of resilience in the face of physical and emotional discomfort, uncertainty, negative feedback, and even traumatic events.Additionally, SDE is negatively correlated with self-reported depressive symptomatology, suggesting a mood-bufering efect of SDE.On the other hand, despite these apparent benefts, there are noteworthy negative consequences of SDE.In particular, SDE that involves distortion or neglect of certain undesirable aspects of reality appears to hamper logical information processing and learning.While SDE may foster temporary protection from self-esteem threats and negative afect, ultimately, it appears to block accurate appraisal of situations and subsequent response modulation, potentially hindering genuine goal attainment and personal improvement.Furthermore, SDE appears to play a role in enabling unethical, even violent behavior and has been implicated as a maintaining factor in substance abuse disorders.How can we understand these apparently contradictory fndings, particularly in contrast to the more positive verdict that appeared to emerge from Dufner et al.'s [6] metaanalysis?One plausible explanation is that, while SDE appears benefcial in the short term, it leads to negative consequences in the long term.Unlike the many crosssectional studies showing positive associations between SDE and well-being, many of the studies that included a longitudinal component found negative associations between SDE and longer-term functional outcomes, such as learning [20] and substance use treatment attendance and recovery [21].Tus, it is possible that if longitudinal outcome data had been collected in studies showing positive concurrent associations between SDE and well-being, these associations may have reversed over time, as was indeed the case for the interpersonal adjustment outcomes reviewed in Dufner et al.'s [6] meta-analysis.
Another likely explanation has to do with our inclusion of studies assessing performance-based or behavioral outcomes of SDE, which were omitted from Dufner et al.'s [6] meta-analysis.Tese relatively objective outcomes, such as problem-solving [29], learning from feedback [10,20,47,71], and perpetration of domestic violence [11,41], were disproportionately more likely to show negative associations with SDE than were the more subjective, largely self-reported outcomes captured by Dufner et al.'s "personal adjustment" construct.Tus, we suggest that studies fnding positive associations between SDE and selfreported desirable outcomes such as self-esteem and emotional well-being do not necessarily corroborate the benefts of SDE but instead may refect the tendency of high selfenhancers to deceive themselves and others about their actual level of well-being.
Te fndings of this review should be considered in light of several limitations.First, the widespread use of selfreport measures to assess both SDE and the associated outcomes in many of the studies reviewed is inherently problematic for several reasons.First, it may be that the self-report SDE measures capture a mix of truthful (even if mistaken) and truth-distorting self-assessments, such that an overall higher score on these measures does not accurately demonstrate higher levels of SDE.Second, those who self-enhance on an SDE measure are also likely to underreport experiences, symptoms, or personal qualities that are negatively valanced, and vice versa.In this light, it is possible that our current understanding of SDE greatly underestimates its negative consequences.Additionally, the majority of studies included in this review involved samples of college students, which limits the generalizability of fndings to a circumscribed age, racial, and socioeconomic demographic.
Despite these limitations, based on the literature reviewed, self-deceptive enhancement is a compelling construct that deserves further investigation in order to clarify its clinical implications.Further clinical research is necessary to examine whether SDE plays a maintaining role in other forms of psychopathology beyond substance use Journal of Teoretical Social Psychology disorders.To fully capture and understand the phenomenon of self-deception, future research should explore not only positively biased forms of self-deception but also the possibility of negatively biased forms of self-deception (see [8], for examples).Additionally, further research is necessary to more clearly delineate the constructs of self-deception and positive illusions and situate them with respect to related constructs (e.g., cognitive biases and defense mechanisms).Given the problematic nature of studying SDE using selfreport measures, future studies should include clinicianrated measures of psychopathology.Future research should also focus on developing and validating observer-based (e.g., clinician-coded) and indirect or implicit measures of SDE so that clinicians can better identify this distortion as it occurs in their patients.
Te negative consequences of SDE and the possibility that it acts as a maintaining factor for psychopathology have important treatment implications.Developing interventions that specifcally target SDE (e.g., self-honesty intervention, Gorlin [72], 2023) may be an important new clinical route to improve psychotherapy's efectiveness across diverse patient demographics and diagnoses, particularly in treating chronic or treatment-resistant cases.Psychoeducation about SDE that normalizes the allure of the short-term benefts while highlighting the long-term costs may be an important therapeutic intervention for particularly ambivalent or treatment-resistant patients.Tere is convergence across many psychotherapeutic orientations around the importance of increasing clients' accurate awareness of their inner worlds and the reality of the external world that shapes them.Tis awareness of and ability to face painful truths is at the heart of therapeutic change; however, cultivating and maintaining the motivation to do the hard work of ongoing, honest selfexamination is also often among the most challenging parts of therapy.Consequently, it is not difcult to understand why clients engage in self-deceptive defense mechanisms over the course of therapy [73].However, selfdeceptive strategies (whether engaged consciously or unconsciously), though they provide momentary and understandably desirable relief, obscure reality and therefore the ability to achieve lasting change.Tus, it is possible that incorporating interventions targeted at the reduction of SDE over the course of treatment may support better mental health outcomes.
Lastly, it is important to take into account cultural considerations related to SDE.Given the relative homogeneity of participant samples in the reviewed positive illusion/selfdeception literature, future research should include more diverse samples.Furthermore, while there have been some fndings supporting higher levels of self-deception among minority groups [23], these results should be interpreted with caution given diferences in cultural attitudes about self-presentation and the potential discrimination that minority groups face, which may make positively biased self-beliefs a helpful corrective against such negative systemic biases.In summary, researchers and clinicians would do well to reconsider whether the subjective, short-term enticement of SDE is outweighed by its objective, longer-term costs to human fourishing.

Table 1 :
SDE measures and outcomes examined across studies.
Note.BIDR-SDE � balanced inventory of desirable responding self-deceptive enhancement scale