Talk:Depressive realism

It should be stressed that depressive realism only holds for people with mild depression. People with severe depression can indeed be "unrealistically negative".

Citations?

This article doesn't have any in text citations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.105.128.59 (talk) 19:09, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Sure it does, they're just not in Wikipedia's normal ref format. Evercat (talk) 20:11, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Voltaire should not, and cannot, be used as a reference to secondary analysis of Voltaire's works. Proper inline citations still needed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.10.230.183 (talk) 01:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Don't know the procedure but...

Is there some way to note that where:

...Pacini, Muir and Epstein (1998) have shown that the depressive realism effect may be because depressed people overcompensate for a tendency toward maladaptive intuitive processing by exercising excessive rational control in trivial situations, and note that the difference with non-depressed people disappears in more consequential circumstances

the very distinction between consequential and inconsequential circumstances is really based on a NON depressive-realist perspective. In other words, they tacitly assume depressive realism is incorrect, then use an implication of this assumption to argue for the assumption itself. This is circular and hence an invalid argument.

Or would that be adding to the debate beyond the remit of the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.135.180.255 (talk) 21:08, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Terrible writing in the first paragraph.

• Why use the word proposition when it links to hypothesis; furthermore, the topic is not so much a hypothesis as a concept. It's a waste of words.
• Paragraph assumes certain results about positive illusions to be true, so citations are needed for these. ("Normal people see things in too positive a light", on what basis is the word "too" used?) (The phrases "positive/negative a light" are casual, subjective idioms which don't lend a concrete explanation.)
• The depression scale is very unusual, it implictly asserts that the two extremes are "normal" and "severely depressed". Is this supported in the literature? If this is not a formal idea and rather a "writing device", it's not being used properly, so please fix it.
• Mixed metaphor between "positive light" and "grey area"; they are being used to refer to totally different objects.

So please, improve this article or it deserves to be deleted. There are lots of examples of good first paragraphs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.180.23.131 (talk) 16:09, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Example of Voltaire may be irrelevant to subject. The focus of cited piece is in response to a worldview of Philosophical Optimism, and not necessarily a personal sense of well being. One might easily be depressed and still hold a stance of Philosophical Optimism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.10.230.183 (talk) 01:51, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Choice making

"People hospitalized for this mood disorder display a flair for making good choices when many options must be considered one at a time, a new study finds.

Depression may prompt an analytical thinking style suited to solving sequential problems, such as deciding when to stop a house hunt and purchase a property or when to stop playing the field and marry a suitor, say psychologist Bettina von Helversen of the University of Basel in Switzerland and her colleagues.

It’s also possible that depressed people adopt a pessimistic outlook that encourages a thorough evaluation of available options, von Helversen's team suggests in an upcoming Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

“Depression may improve sequential decision making, which includes some high-stakes choices,” she says."

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/73973/title/Thinking_better_with_depression --Gwern (contribs) 18:39 6 May 2011 (GMT)

Neutral point of view?

This article offers little explanation of the subject and seems to mostly present criticisms and arguments against the theory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.8.7.30 (talk) 13:32, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

typo?

"a negative bias in the former and positive bias in the later" < looks like a typo to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.114.15.223 (talk) 04:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

submitted for DYK

-- Coello (talk)

History of the theory

I'll leave this review to someone more knowledgeable in this area, but it's surprising that there's no mention in this article of who coined this term, what researchers pioneered research on the subject or took major stands on it, etc. This seems like a notable absence. Thanks for your work to improve this one, and good luck with the GA nom, -- Khazar2 (talk) 11:48, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

RE: History of the Theory

Khazar2 raises a valid point. While the researchers who developed the theory are cited in the text, this can (and has) been made more clear. Thanks for the feedback. -- Coello (talk)

Good article nomination suggestions

I just saw this article while browsing the good article nominations. My immediate suggestion is to mine the source guideline on reliable sources in medicine for tips on identifying reliable secondary sources on this topic. The most nearly relevant source lists I keep in user space are about genetics and related topics, for a little information about depression, and about human intelligence, for some broader reference books on psychology and cognition. Thus far, the article pertains mostly to development of the theory, and cites primary research articles, but it will be good for getting this article to good article status to cite more reliable secondary sources, as those will evaluate the development of the theory. One more suggestion is to put the date (year) of the first published paper on the article topic in the same sentence in the lede where the paper's authors are mentioned. I think readers of Wikipedia will want to know how recently this theory was developed. This is an interesting topic, and now that I am commenting here this article will be on my watchlist as you continue working on it. Keep up the good work. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:38, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Most of the first paragraph of "Evidence against" section is irrelevant?

The bit about judging the performance of others seems fine, but the part that says depressive people are less optimistic in public seems completely irrelevant to the topic. We're interested in accuracy here, not optimism.

The next part says that depressive people rated themselves more negatively when more time had passed, but that doesn't actually contradict the claim that the depressive people were more accurate in their assessments.

Is it safe for me to delete those sections? Are those sections just really badly worded and only *look* irrelevant? What's up here? 167.219.0.140 (talk) 13:10, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

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