Another study calls into question the healing power of positive affirmations—those ubiquitous fixtures of pop psychology parodied by former comedian Al Franken as counselor Stuart Smalley (“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggonit, people like me”). In a study published in 2009 University of Waterloo psychologist Joanne Wood and her colleagues found that for participants with high self-esteem, repeating a positive affirmation (“I am a lovable person”) multiple times indeed resulted in slightly better moods right afterward. But among those with low self-esteem, the positive affirmations backfired, resulting in worse moods. Wood and her colleagues conjectured that statements like Smalley’s ring hollow in the minds of individuals with low self-esteem, serving only to remind them of how often they have fallen short of their life goals.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Another potential hitch in the positive-thinking movement is that a sanguine attitude may be unhealthy when taken to an extreme, because it can become unhinged from reality. In a 2000 article University of Michigan psychologist Christopher Peterson, a founder of the positive psychology movement, distinguished realistic optimism, which hopes for the best while remaining attuned to potential threats, from unrealistic optimism, which ignores such threats.
A 2007 study by University of Virginia psychologist Shigehiro Oishi, University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener and Michigan State University psychologist Richard Lucas reinforces Peterson’s concerns. Using analyses from several large international samples, they found that although extremely happy people are the most successful in close interpersonal relationships and volunteer work, moderately happy people are more successful than extremely happy people financially and educationally and are also more politically active. Admittedly, Oishi and his colleagues measured happiness rather than optimism per se, although the two tend to be fairly closely associated. Still, their findings raise the possibility that although a realistically positive attitude toward the world often helps us to achieve certain life goals, a Pollyannaish attitude may have its costs—perhaps because it fosters complacency.
Positive thinking surely comes with advantages: it may encourage us to take needed risks and expand our horizons. But it has downsides as well and may not be for everyone, especially those for whom worrying and kvetching come naturally as coping mechanisms. Moreover, positive thinking may be counterproductive if it leads us to blithely ignore life’s dangers. Finally, as journalist Barbara Ehrenreich warns in a 2009 book, the pervasive assumption that positive attitudes permit us to “think our way out of” illnesses such as cancer has an unappreciated dark side: it may lead people who fail to recover from these illnesses to blame themselves for not being more chipper.
This article was originally published with the title Can Positive Thinking Be Negative?.
See what we're tweeting about
9 Comments
Add Commentwhile positive thinking might be beneficial to ones health in that it might make us to live longer here is a bit of realism what if we are older,sickly,alone with deep loneliness does this positive health mean we are tortured a bit longer?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow horrid!
Instead of optimism or pessimism, how about trying a littl pragmatic realism? Whether the proverbial glass is half-full or half-empty doesn't really depend on your outlook, it depends on whether your filling it or emptying it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHope for the best, prepare for the worst, expect something in between!
The power of positive thinking is far out stripped by the power of certain kinds of negative thinking. Generalised negative thoughts about yourself are damaging to mental health. You can be harshly self-critical about particular aspects of your behaviour without damaging your mental health but when those thoughts become generalised feelings of self-loathing you are headed for serious problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBlindboy: You may want to read the article that appears 6" above your comment. It is about this exact topic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPositive Psychology is a pseudoscientific con. Nothing more. Facts are that "depressed" or pessimistic people have a more accurate view of themselves and their environment. Possitivity is good for sales and con games, nothing more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's how stock markets work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs Babara Ehrenreich likes to point out, the Global Financial Crisis was brought to you by those positive-thinking, optimistic, deluded types in the banking and finance sector.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn 1980 a Broadway character sung: "I'm feeling too good today". A little bit of depression keeps you in a better contact with reality, and paranoid personalities have an increased recognition of other people's mood. Salvador Dali past most of his life practising what he called "The paranoid-critical method", even when he acknowledged not knowing at all what this expression meant. Salut +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs previous commentators have said, it's all about proportionality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProf John Gottman found that couples for make about 5 positive to each negative comment about each other are likely to remain happy together.
Prof Marcial Losada found that high performing teams make 6 positive comments to each negative comment. He saw a qualitative transformation at 3:1 that peaked at 6:1 and declined above 11:1. To me that feels intuitively about right. Life isn't that good! But it's not bad.
Losada showed that positivity alone is not decisive. The high performing teams asked as many questions as they offer opinions and show as much interest in Others as in Themselves.