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Dogs Can Be Pessimistic
Not that it will change anything, but researchers at Bristol University say that your dog might be a gloom-monger. In addition to the downer dogs, the study also found a few that seemed happy no matter how uncaring the world around them was. "We know that people's emotional states affect their judgments and that happy people are more likely to judge an ambiguous situation positively. What our study has shown is that this applies similarly to dogs," said professor Mike Mendl, an author of the study and head of animal welfare and behavior at Bristol University.
and told them: You aren't a packleader. With Cesar the dogs where perfectly happy. How much money did this nonsense cost the taxpayer?
I'd say depressed people are not seeing reality clearly at all. I used to assign very pessimistic reasons to everything. Now that I try to focus on more positive possible explanations for things, I end up being right a lot of the time, and save myself needless worrying and self-deprecation. A silly but representative example would be if someone doesn't turn up to meet me at a certain time I might assume they just aren't going to show up at all rather than the obvious answer that they're just running a bit late.
I have managed to be a bit more "normal" recently. This is partially through improving my diet and getting regular exercise, which help a lot when it comes to having your body and brain chemistry function "normally", but also I have tried to improve my thought patterns to be more positive, and it does all seem to be coming together at last. Even when I get into foul moods I can still try to be logical and not let myself do anything stupid. Depressed people might think they're being realistic about their situations, but I'd say often they're really not, especially when trying to assign motivation to other people's actions.
which is totally what she said
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness :(
Some dogs never tried to escape the shocks, just giving in and accepting them. Is this technically pessimism? I find this to be a sad study
I definitely agree with you, but to an extent. I do put a lot of the blame for bad dogs on owners, but I don't think the owner is always everything.
My wife and I adopted two rescued puppies when they were about 6-7 weeks old (their mother had rejected some of the puppies). We've been doing things like taking them on walks since a very young age, and while they are in many ways very good dogs (good with commands and listening--best dogs I've ever had for holding in a sit/lay down until verbally released), they remain to this day TERRIFIED of other dogs. They know the neighbor dogs, and are good on walks, wary around new people, but if a dog in public comes up to them, they get totally scared and pull and whine to get away. It's a behavior I haven't figured out how to get rid of. They're just...scared of new people and dogs. No amount of social interaction seems to make it better either. Oh well.
Dogs tend to reflect the personality of their owners.
Fascinating. By contrast, even though I frequently take a cynical view of situations, I find that I'm right about eighty to ninety percent of the time. Maybe it's not that you were too cynical before, but rather that others have just gotten better at fooling you. :-D
But seriously, normal people take an optimistic view when it comes to their friends and a cynical view about the motives of their enemies, and a semi-cynical view of the motives of strangers. The first two are generally right, the third is out of an abundance of caution, and depending on whether the cynical view was right or not, those people get lumped into one of the first two after a period of time. It's just the way our brains work. To me, it sounds less like you are no longer taking a cynical view and more like you've finally relaxed and gotten comfortable with lumping certain people into your "friends" pile.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I bet the Dog Whisperer could fix them.
He's had similar dogs and fixed them quickly.
Pretty amazing stuff.
I wonder if sometimes he fails horribly and those don't make the show.
It's amazing the way he stays calm while they bite him.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.