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The Problem With Positive Thinking
An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times explains research into how our mindset can influence results. The common refrain when striving for a goal is to stay positive and imagine success — people say this will help you accomplish what you want. But a series of psychological experiments show such thinking tends to have exactly the opposite effect. "In a 2011 study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, we asked two groups of college students to write about what lay in store for the coming week. One group was asked to imagine that the week would be great. The other group was just asked to write down any thoughts about the week that came to mind. The students who had positively fantasized reported feeling less energized than those in the control group. As we later documented, they also went on to accomplish less during that week." This research has been replicated across many types of people and many different goals.
Building on that research, the scientists developed a thought process called "mental contrasting," where people are encouraged to think about their dreams coming true only for a few minutes before dedicating just as much time to thinking about the obstacles they'll have to deal with. Experiments have demonstrated that subjects using these techniques were more successful at things like exercise and maintaining a healthy diet than a control group. "[D]reaming about the future calms you down, measurably reducing systolic blood pressure, but it also can drain you of the energy you need to take action in pursuit of your goals."
Building on that research, the scientists developed a thought process called "mental contrasting," where people are encouraged to think about their dreams coming true only for a few minutes before dedicating just as much time to thinking about the obstacles they'll have to deal with. Experiments have demonstrated that subjects using these techniques were more successful at things like exercise and maintaining a healthy diet than a control group. "[D]reaming about the future calms you down, measurably reducing systolic blood pressure, but it also can drain you of the energy you need to take action in pursuit of your goals."
The negative thinkers/pessimists get all the work done, then the positive thinkers say "See, there was nothing to worry about" and take all the credit.
Positive thinking .... I always knew it would never work
Its always interesting to read articles that challenge the accepted wisdom
'Positive thinking' is essentially the vein hope that the current situation you judge as undesirable will change to something desirable just because you desire it. It fails to recognise that being happy and content can be achieved simply by changing your judgement. You can decide to be content with your life. The truth is that those external things; wealth, health, power and fame, are all fleeting. The only thing you really have control over is you. The solution isn't hoping that things will get better, it is accepting that they won't and pleasantly surprised if they do.
I don't see why establishing unrealistic views of reality would ever be constructive. Imagining the week will excel in every way and finding out that it doesn't isn't what I consider "positive thinking" -- obviously the week is going to fall short and then the lesson learned is not going to be a habit of thinking positive, it is going to be the opposite, that thinking positive is futile and incorrect.
What I consider "positive thinking" is a realistic perspective which acknowledges the good and the bad but emphasizing the good aspects. Seeing losing your job as an opportunity to start a new chapter. Seeing the misfortune of others as an opportunity to help them. Being thankful for what you already have instead of craving everything you don't. It's a more accurate view in any case -- it's quite rare that losing a job or a relationship deprives the rest of your life of meaning or success, and solving problems actually does give the brain a sense of euphoria, so why should you be upset about encountering them?
The mental contrasting approach the article describes seems oriented along those lines, but to me it's not a matter of "contrast" so much as a matter of compatibility -- positive thinking doesn't contrast with realism, realism simply sets the context in which positive thinking should take place.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Positive people are dangerous. Because they assume everything is going to be fine, they fail to plan for things to go wrong, and then after you're stuck cleaning up the mess they caused, they sweep it all under the rug and act like everything went smoothly - so not only do you get no recognition for your heroic efforts to fix everything, but they're fully confident in their ability to handle the next situation just as well as the last.
But nobody wants to listen to the pessimists, because they're so negative.
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The idea behind positive thinking was never to simply visualize the positive goal, it was to envision the challenges and think through overcoming the challenges.
Ignoring the challenges is an absence of thinking.
Positive thinkers already get some of the mental-benefit of the task being complete.
I agree with this. This is like the guy who fantasizes about a woman he has a crush on without taking action. The more he fantasizes about that woman, the more he jerks off to her image, in the long-run -- the even less likely he'll be prepared to deal with her in real life. For the ladies, please reverse the genders into what I've just said, and the same will be true.
It's like people who eat empty calories instead of eating proper meals, or people who love losing themselves in power fantasies created by comic books, hollywood studios, and game studios, instead of living life to the fullest in the real world (not that everybody is like that, I'm just talking about the more extreme cases, the ones that have truly substituted fantasy worlds for their own realities).
That saps some of the motivation to finish, since they've already received part of the payoff.
That's true to an extent, but some would say that if you think that motivation is a pre-condition needed to get things done, then you've already created yourself an extra mental barrier that will prevent you from getting things done in the first place.
Action is not always the result of internal motivation. Just think of the last job you had, or the last difficult classes you've taken. Where you always motivated to work, or to study? Probably not, and yet, you probably still managed to show up to work and do it anyway, or study what needed to be studied. Often times, that extra motivation and that extra energy is not the pre-condition of the action, but the actual consequence of having taken that action in the first place.
Case in point, I used to attend public speaking clubs (Toastmasters clubs) late at night. Often times, I've had a long day already before attending those meetings and I was unmotivated to go to those meetings. And yet when I still went anyway, my energy levels went up, not down, as a result. So if there is a perfect time for taking action, it's when you're feeling unmotivated. That feeling of unmotivation should be your internal trigger, instead of being the excuse you tell yourself for doing nothing.
It's also called "hindsight in 20/20".
You know who doesn't turn the experience into the defining event" of their lives? The positive thinkers who didn't make it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In any setting I need to see shortcomings in order to improve on them. So called "positive thinkers" have a tough time dealing with that. (Usually their claim to fame on my work is that they too cooperated. Usually by not inhibiting me.) But as age grinds on, I learned to naturally word my concerns in a positive sounding fashion. I sometimes utter a kind of new-speak -which I detest- but it enables me to proceed with development, so I indulge.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
The negative thinkers/pessimists get all the work done, then the positive thinkers say "See, there was nothing to worry about" and take all the credit
In reality no one can be said to be absolutely pessimistic nor absolutely optimistic
Most often the one who truly gets the work done follows the "Expect the _worst_ but hope for the _best_" adage
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !