Responding to Cognitive Bias and Practical Epistemology

Tom in your blog on  – Cognitive Bias and Practical Epistemology –        Near the end you speak of what makes people happy isn’t that they necessarily have true beliefs but having convenient falsehoods to support their image of the world.               I would like to add to this by a research paper I had come across when doing a search for a paper I was writing for a psychology class I had taken.  The research paper was by Shelley E. Taylor and Jonathon D. Brown and is title ‘Illusion and Well-Being:  A Social Psychological Perspective on Mental Health’.                In trying to summarize the paper it said…  That most people have illusions about their own stature and always feel they are on upper half of what they deem to be important factors in their own mind, even if it isn’t true.  That what most people accept to believe is bent to fit their need to support already existing opinions.  And not so surprising is that this helps us feel better about our lives.  As you have pointed out, it would seem that in covering for our own happiness we will misconstrue reality to fit our need.                 As for what to do about this… well the report did say that the people they found to have the best grasp of reality were those that were clinically depressed.  Huh?  I guess illusion keeps us happy and reality just gets us depressed.  Are we really as messed up as all of that?