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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 == false hopes
Positive thinking .... I always knew it would never work
Positive thinkers already get some of the mental-benefit of the task being complete. Imagining being finished is just a little bit like being finished. That saps some of the motivation to finish, since they've already received part of the payoff. Negative thinkers have actually increased the payoff even more, because they get the additional payoff of having been wrong about their negativity.
Its always interesting to read articles that challenge the accepted wisdom
That sounds like exactly what I normally do when I daydream.
:|
I have chronic depression that has kept me unemployed for most of my adult life, and I'm fat as hell.
Insanity later.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
'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 just move them to whatever I've accomplished... *Mission Accomplished!*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I thought it was just me that was was motivated solely by fear and worry
Same here, wasted years daydreaming about success, it's just a form of mental masturbation. Now I cherish my fears and revel in my worries... and gain a small measure of success and satisfaction from the knowledge that perception of reality is reasonably accurate.
I apply The Power of Positive Thinking by being positive that I will screw up completely unless I think. I'm Not OK, You're Not OK , but that's okay. I don each mask of the Four Temperments (this one comes with music) in turn as I consider any great challenge or problem, but the phlegmatic fits best.
I 'm the sanest person I ever met. Don't get out much.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Not funny. Not remotely funny.
In a business book by James C. Collins called Good to Great, Collins writes about a conversation he had with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy during his period in the Vietnamese POW camp.[11]
When Collins asked who didn't make it out of Vietnam, Stockdale replied:
Stockdale then added:
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.
The negative thinkers can turn into over-achievers. Thinking that if they're really productive, they will get promoted.
Unfortunately for them, once they realize this is not the case, they get angry, frustrated, cynical.
Meanwhile the positive thinkers become high performers, who achieve less individually and in any given week and realize that working as a group and motivating people is more important than individual contributions. They stay in the game longer and turn into good leaders. They get promoted while the negative thinkers leave in search of the recognition they've earned but don't seem to get anywhere.
Liberty.
And negative thinking doesn't help all that much either. Negative thinking just assumes nothing will ever work.
Pragmatic thinking, on the other hand, asks "What might go wrong?" Pragmatic thinking says, "I want this to work well, but what would keep it from working?"
Pragmatic thinking ends up getting things right much more often than either positive thinking oe negative thinking.
People I worked with would always cringe when I'd say "Hold on a second!", until They found out how often I was right in the end. Eventually they'd bounce ideas off me for projects I wasn't even on to se if they forgot or didn't think of something.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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.
My dentist, of all places, has someone they employ who wanders around and asks you if you want a hand or neck massage while you are waiting.
I loved the reaction the first time that I said "no thank you; I prefer to remain tense."
Thinking positively about the future has loads of negative effects. For example, increased Anger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuDAfU3uj6o).
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to be in their study. Call that job satisfaction, 'cause I don't.
Have gnu, will travel.
Optimists and pessimists share the same shortcoming: both disregard how their action can influence how things will go on.
That's why you can never relax until you have the government buying your stuff! Almost every great fortune in America is made at the expense of the tax payer, be it IBM getting the first Social Security contract to Walmart having their working live off foodstamps and medicaid. Privatizing education is the next frontier, charter schools will put USA education dollars in the pocket of the capitalists who own the charter schools! This will dwarf even Oracle's military contract for getting fat on the tax payer teet! Getting the federal tax money is the end game my friend!
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Again.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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The study is really more about setting unrealistic goals. You don't want to do that. But from a mental health perspective it is still good to manually steer the ship towards positivity as our minds are so clever picking all sorts of negative trash anyway.
A healthy balance is important.
We could all complain here about the optimists, but the true pessimists would not be able to participate because they have all already killed themselves.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I thought it was just me that was was motivated solely by fear and worry, but apparently it's most people if not everyone! Of course if you expect things to go great already then wtf are you working so hard for, things are going to turn out great anyway remember?
Anxiety energizes and motivates people. Too much will paralyze them. Gotta reach the optimal amount that energizes, but does not enervate. Along the lines of "eustress" not "distress."
In my experience, management consists of optimists, engineering consists of pessimists. Which is why managent is sure the project can be done with half the resources, in a third the time, while the engineers obsess over the thousand ways the product can fail. This is why good engineers are not wanted for management.
There is a strange middle ground of a sort. I am not invested too much in the outcome. Some people shrink from the fight because victory is impossible. This is the 'pragmitist' who evaluates the probability of success and decides the low chance of success means the goal itself isn't worth the effort. Then there are the optimists who fool themselves that the goal is easier than it is, or who believe that the good guy always wins. This is delusional.
Then there are people who accept the reality: they know the road will be hard, and long, involve personal sacrifice and perhaps suffering. They will not fool themselves about the ease of the goal or the probability of success. In fact in many ways the success or failure is deeply irrelevant because as I said above all we have is our intentions and actions. Do or do not, that is our choice. The outcome is up to fate and should not concern us.
This is what Stockdale meant; that we should not fool ourselves about the ease of the goal; that we should face up to grim reality and conduct ourselves in a way that best reflects on us. Because nothing else matters.
It is this attitude that drove my involvement in the campaign against Software Patents in New Zealand. A campaign that was always one breath away from failure. A campaign that many concluded was doomed to fail. A campaign that despite being passed into law may be swept away by the TPP. But these threats do not worry me because so long as I am prepared to stand up and work for the common good I honour myself regardless of the outcome.
This all boils down to leading a balanced life. You want a healthy amount of optimism and hope grounded in reality. Leading a life looking too far into the future or the past is not necessarily healthy either. Zen Buddhism teaches that life must be balanced and will seek balance. Furthermore the philosophy teaches us to accept and embrace impermanence versus fear it. The sooner we learn to embrace impermanence, the less anxiety we experience. This then translates to a healthier mind, body, and spirit.
I'm with the martial arts masters on this one. If you fight and lose, fight again, lose better.
In sparring we say, "Invest in loss". It's a philosophy that has led to a lot of important wins.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Doesn't it seem strange that human intellect seems to have peaked at it's current level? Intelligence beyond a couple standard dev. above a 100 IQ seems to be negatively correlated with reproduction(or else 100 would be more intelligent than it is).
IQ != intelligence.
I suspect the optimal strategy is to dwell on the success just long enough to convince yourself the goal is achievable and then switch to the mindset of "ok, now I need to make it happen".
Too much thinking about the positive and you feel like you've already won and lose the motivation to put in the work.
But if you only dwell on the negatives your task seems impossible and you again have no reason to work.
I stole this Sig
But the correlation is quite high.
It is true that the concept of intelligence is a bit amorphous, and that the measures we use to put a number on it are not comprehensive. But the serious IQ tests have demonstrated effectiveness at rating our commonsense concept of intelligence, so it is good enough.
It is also true that people who have very high IQ scores tend to suffer social isolation. It is very hard for them to relate with people who can't keep up with them in a conversation, and who aren't interested in talking about pretty much anything that interests them. Further, they must live within a system of laws that was built by such people; the deficiencies scream for correction that will not come (precisely because any corrections require understanding on the part of large numbers of people who can't think it through as far).
The smarties drift towards elitism, as is natural enough in their position, but that only further contributes to the isolation and consequent depression.
It's a tough life. Good thing some of them are smart enough to figure out some useful coping strategies.
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 !
Correction: a small business.
Once you're too big to fail you're in clover.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They also have zero common sense and are crap at sport. Any other stereotypes you'd like to trot out?
Assuming the intelligent person is normal in other respects (e.g. not an aspie) he'll be able to adjust to the crowd he's with. And even if he has zero interest in Celebrity Honey Boo-Boo Monster Truck Ballroom Shore he'll either be able to fake it or steer the conversation away without anyone noticing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But the correlation is quite high.
Actually, no. Fools have arbitrarily decided that certain things are relevant to intelligence (how well you do in school, how much money you make, etc.) without a shred of evidence. We haven't even properly defined intelligence in any sort of rigorous way.
But the serious IQ tests have demonstrated effectiveness at rating our commonsense concept of intelligence, so it is good enough.
Nonsense. Common sense is often neither common and nor does it often make sense. Plenty of nonsensical things used to be "common sense." That is not science, either. The "common sense concept" of intelligence does not matter in the least.
Stop repeating myths.
Has anyone contacted Norman Vincent Peale about this?
(I had to say it, there was no obligatory reference to him this entire thread.)
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Positive thinking keeps you going.
Negative thinking gets the job done.
Having both gets the job done right.
This article is definitely crafted for a targeted audience.
What was studied in both articles linked to is not what is usually meant by those who talk about the power of positive thinking. As others have pointed out the idea behind the power of positive thinking is imagining successfully completing the goal, not imagining having successfully completing the goal.
I am a fencer. One of the people I fence with often says before they fence someone, "I can't beat them. I am a terrible fencer." Unsurprisingly, after saying this they usually lose, even against people I have fenced and know they are better than. Occasionally, they will be convinced that they are not a bad fencer. They will enter a bout against someone convinced that they can win. When that happens, they usually win, even against fencers I know are better than they are. Positive thinking does not cause them to beat fencers who are a lot better than they are, but it, sometimes, allows them to take advantage when those fencers underestimates them.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Hope for the best, plan for the worst...
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
Casteism
... given I watched "Pain and Gain" yesterday, in which Positive Thinking gobshite is held up as the inspiration behind meatheads torturing and murdering people. (It's a comedy).
The positive thinking is necessary for the sales people. The negative thinking is necessary for the engineers. That's why most companies have a "wall" between the groups.
But the engineers need some of sales' positive thinking to avoid loss of enthusiasm. And the sales people need some of engineering's negative thinking to avoid "floating away into the sky". So the "wall" should not be too high. 8-)
Cheer up, my friends said, things could be worse. So I cheered up, and, sure enough, they got worse.
mark "if I am depressed, it is for good and sufficent reasons, and if I wasn't depressed, I wouldn't be facing reality"*
* copyright, me, 1983