Depressive Realism Definition Depressive realism refers to the findings that depressed individuals tend to be more accurate or realistic than nondepressed persons in their judgments about themselves. Specifically, research suggests that nondepressed people are vulnerable to cognitive illusions, including unrealistic optimism, overestimation of themselves, and an exaggerated sense of their capacity to control events. This
Naive Realism Definition Naive realism describes people’s tendency to believe that they perceive the social world “as it is”—as objective reality—rather than as a subjective construction and interpretation of reality. This belief that one’s perceptions are realistic, unbiased interpretations of the social world has two important implications. First, that other, rational people will have similar
Experimental Realism Definition Experimental realism is the extent to which situations created in social psychology experiments are real and impactful to participants. Experimental Realism Background The concept of experimental realism was developed in response to criticism that most social psychology experiments take place in artificial laboratory settings and thus are invalid for examining how people
Mundane Realism Definition Mundane realism describes the degree to which the materials and procedures involved in an experiment are similar to events that occur in the real world. Therefore, mundane realism is a type of external validity, which is the extent to which findings can generalize from experiments to real-life settings. Mundane Realism History and