Self-Focused Attention and Self-Enhancement : How Negative Life Events Affect Well-being

The purpose of this study was to investigate the well-being of individuals with positive illusions (i.e., selfenhancing individuals), mediated by a negative self-focusing task.From the findings, self-enhancing individuals in interpersonal attraction and social desirability showed some decrease in fulfillment in life with a self-focusing task, compared with those without the task.That is, the domain of well-being, closely related to the negative experience, was damaged expectedly even among self-enhancing individuals although other domains were unaffected.The present study also indicated the robustness of the self-enhancing tendency among Japanese, and the difficulty in manipulating self-focused attention.