Happiness Delusion? Depression Sane?

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DoctorJ

Registered: 06/30/03
Posts: 8,846
Loc: space
Last seen: 3 years, 9 months

Happiness Delusion? Depression Sane?

#2103341 - 11/13/03 08:18 PM (22 years, 9 months ago)

(This one's for you, SWAMI :wink:

)

I recently read a social psychology experiment in which two groups of people were subjected to the same test. Group A was all mildly depressed people (ie- sad enough to be considered a disorder, but not suicidally morose). Group B was all "normal" non-depressed people.

This test was as follows:

The subject was placed in a room containing a green diode, a chair, and a table. On the table was a pushbutton, like a game show "buzz in" device . The subject was then told to press the button how ever often he chose for about 10 minutes. At the end of this ten minutes, the subject was asked whether he had any control over the ignition of the green diode. In reality, the button did nothing, and the diode was set to randomly turn on and off.

Here's the kicker:

People from Group B (the "normal", happy people) were statistically far more likely to make the error in saying that the frequency of their button pushing had an effect on the diode's ignition. In other words, Group B were statistically more deluded in thinking that they had control over the light, by a sufficient enough margin to pass the t test.

Conversely, people from Group A (the depressed people) were statistically more likely to admit that they had no control over the light. It didn't matter whether they pressed the button or not, or how often they pressed it. Group B generally recognized that the light's pattern of going on and off was either completely random or controlled by someone other than themselves.

**************************************************************

This study seems to back up the social psychology concept of the necessary utilitarian delusion. What this concept suggests, is that most happy, productive people who never need to see a shrink or get psych treatment, people we generally think of as "sane", are in fact quite deluded. They are deluded about their own virtue and self worth, they are deluded about the pain and suffering of others, and they are deluded about the amount of control they have over their reality. Because this delusion seems practical and doesnt cause social or economic problems, it is not classified as a disease.

Certain types of depressed people (obviously the degree of depression is a factor here) are actually more accurate than normal people in their assesment of reality. They are more self-critical and come to more accurate assesment of themselves. Depending on their degree of learned helplessness, they can be more accurate in their assesment of the control they have over their reality. And some depressed people are highly sensitive to the suffering of others (this often creates a kind of negative feedback loop which makes their depression worse). Ever known one of those Billy Corgan type people who was just soooo deeply sad about all the starving children in the world, he thought about it all the time and it seriously fucked up his days?

The point is that all of these conditions can occur at once in just the right degrees to produce a person who is technically mentally diseased, and yet has more claim to sanity than most of the people we would consider "normal". We would call this person diseased because he is less functional than the happily deluded. The DSM, being a pragmatic guide, generally requires some kind of behaviorial malfunction before it recommends diagnosing mental traits as disease. This is, of course, to prevent people with colorful personalities and humanistic quirks from being diagnosed as insane.

But its funny how we look at and treat people who view things crystal clear. That study definitely defends the statement: "I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist!"

Of course, you don't have to agree with the study. You could say it was loaded. Since learned helplessness is both a cause and symptom of depression, researchers could generally assume that most depressed people would say what they did.

But what about the happy, normal people? Why were people that we normally think of as sane so much more likely to commit such an obvious misattribution?

I definitely think that this study has dire consequences for the concept of hapiness. I'm hoping someone can disprove its implications.

Is happiness all just delusion and the stimulation of reward centers in our brain?

Are some pessimists and depressed people indeed just realists as they claim?

Extras:

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