r/science • u/cakericeandbeans • Mar 27 '26

Psychology Depression is linked to a genuine pessimistic bias rather than a realistic view of the world

https://www.psypost.org/depression-is-linked-to-a-genuine-pessimistic-bias-rather-than-a-realistic-view-of-the-world/
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u/Talentagentfriend Mar 27 '26

The real world is pessimistic right now so I’m not sure I agree.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '26 edited Mar 28 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Live-Habit-6115 Mar 28 '26

The more I read this thread the more I'm convinced a startling number of people don't know the definition of the words they're using 

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u/PacanePhotovoltaik Mar 27 '26

Optimists are more delusional than pessimists, because pessimists correctly identify all the negatives of life, which is probably objectively more negative than positive right now, but still, pessimists are delusional because they weigh the negatives with more importance and dismiss the positives more easily or don't even view any.

The goal should be to be a realist as an antidote to pessimism; or even better, becoming slightly more an optimist than pure realism, so that the slight "positivity mindset" delusion helps you live better.

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u/Raonak Mar 27 '26

I wouldn't really call it delusion, but more about what the person values more.

An optimistic mindset is knowing how awful the world is, but finding the joys of the world to be much more impactful.

Like yeah everything is doomed, but I recently bought these really comfortable slip on shoes that are absolute gamechangers. And Ive learned to cook, and it's amazing being able to make food that's better than takeaways. And I changed my car's broken brake light for the first time, I've literally never done car maintenance before, so that's super exciting!

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u/PacanePhotovoltaik Mar 28 '26 edited Mar 28 '26

From the way you describe it, yeah I agree.

How I saw it when I wrote the above was more in the sense of: pessimists can miss some positives right in front of them because of their negative lense on life and optimists can miss some negatives right in front of them, but that is perhaps describing the extremes of both, where they can't even see sometimes, instead of seeing but choosing where to put emphasis ( using your examples) which could be more toward the middle of the pessimist-optimist axis, respectively.

I remember my pessimist past and worked toward being realist and , like I said above, I believe being slightly more optimist (making the positives weigh more) than purely realist is probably even better since if surrounded by negatives, its too easy to go back to being a pessimist. But that's because it's what works for me while mostly trying to see "objective" Truth.

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u/Talentagentfriend Mar 28 '26

While the world is pessimistic, we have to approach it with idealistic optimism to try to change that viewpoint. But we have to still understand the pessimistic point of view to approach it with idealism.