Is self-enhancement healthy? Conceptual, psychometric, and empirical analysis

Whereas S. E. Taylor and J. D. Brown (1988) proposed that positive illusions foster mental health, C. R. Colvin, J. Block, and D. C. Funder (1995) presented empirical evidence that suggested the opposite: The extent to which self-ratings are more favorable than ratings by others (self-enhancement) is correlated with unfavorable personality traits (self-enhancement correlation). Our conceptual analysis shows that these propositions are not incompatible. Our psychometric analysis reveals that self-enhancement correlations are a function of the self-other agreement and the consensus of others. Our empirical analysis of self-enhancement correlations, self-other agreement, and consensus of others across 830 traits indicates that (a) self-enhancement is consistent across highly evaluative traits, but not across traits low in evaluativeness, and (b) self-enhancement correlations are minimal for non-evaluative traits and increase with increasing trait evaluativeness. We conclude that people consistently differ in their tendency to enhance their trait descriptions and that this tendency is linked to the unfavorability of their traits.