Feeling grumpy 'is good for you'
“IF you can’t say something good about someone,” a wise woman once said, “sit right here by me.” Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Teddy and notorious curmudgeon, would have been awfully lonely if she’d come up with that personal motto during the past decade. America’s mania for “The Secret,” team-building exercises, Oprah, vision boards, life coaches, antidepressants and inspirational terminal-illness ribbons has all but outlawed any manner of negative thought.
According to this philosophy, if you’re not constantly generating positive brain waves, you’re dooming yourself to a life half-lived, and you deserve whatever hardships may come your way (obviously, as you’re the one who psychically invited them in). But recently, there’s been an undercurrent of doubt. It seems a perkiness backlash may be brewing, fueled not by hopeful thoughts but by actual scientific research. In his study “Think Negative!,” published this month in Australian Science, psychology professor Joseph Forgas says bad moods are actually useful for us.
“Mild negative mood and sadness have definite advantages when it comes to dealing with certain kinds of problems that require vigilance, concentration and careful attention to the world around us,” Forgas says via e-mail from the University of New South Wales. “Our studies specifically suggest that those in a mild negative mood remember more details in their environment, have better eyewitness memories, are less prone to judgmental errors, are less gullible, and are better communicators and persuaders.”
The grouchy and therefore less gullible might also be less inclined to buy into the booming self-help industry, which Barbara Ehrenreich takes down in her new book “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.” In her examination of the positive-psychology industry, which she dates back to Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 book “The Power of Positive Thinking,” Ehrenreich finds that it bears an alarming resemblance to brainwashing.
“We have seen the enemy,” she writes, “and it is ourselves, or at least our thoughts. Fortunately, though, thoughts can be monitored and corrected until .¤.¤. positive thoughts become ‘automatic’ and the individual becomes ‘fully conditioned.’¤”
But fully conditioned to accomplish what?
The millions of adherents of positive thinking have yet to experience a mass increase in wealth, health and happiness. Why haven’t they visualized us out of the current economic climate? Maybe what we need instead is a little realistic thinking — hell, maybe even a little depression. Instead of hewing rigidly to the mantra “Yes we can!” perhaps we should at least consider what happens if, you know, we can’t.
In a recent article in Scientific American, evolutionary psychologist Paul W. Andrews argues that even full-blown depression isn’t necessarily the disorder it’s been made out to be. Rather, it’s a rational, evolved human response to adverse circumstances. “Depression is actually an indicator of how much of your intellectual capacity you’re using,” he says.
“If you’re really depressed, you’re probably using your full intellectual resources on a problem.” And intellect has been in short supply during the positive-psychology years, Ehrenreich points out. Books such as “The Secret” and mass-media preachers like Joel Osteen encourage their followers to think of the universe as a big mind-controlled ATM. Success in life is not predicated on educating oneself or learning to think things through — it’s simply a matter of wanting stuff hard enough.
“Anyone, anyone at all could be catapulted into wealth at any time simply by focusing their thoughts,” as Ehrenreich puts it. In a similar vein, costly personal-enhancement seminars, such as those run by Landmark Corp., have been proliferating wildly. One recent event ended badly enough to have dealt a potentially lethal blow to the whole industry, when three attendees at a $9,000 “Spiritual Warrior” retreat died in an overheated sweat lodge.
Retreat leader James Arthur Ray is the author of the 2008 best seller “Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want” (the tenets of which are also included in “The Secret”). His tactics, as reported by participants, included encouraging people to push past their limits — even, it seemed, their need for oxygen.
But he’s only the most high-profile member of a massive industry, built on teaching people to stop thinking critically and start hoping. And it’s this kind of pernicious “positive thinking” that researchers like Forgas hope to combat with their findings. “Vigilant realism is probably a better recipe for success in life than the unrelenting pursuit of positive thinking, which by definition produces a distortion of reality,” he says. “It’s rather strange that American culture has such a simple-minded commitment to positivity.”
SARA STEWART
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Thank you for your thought-provoking article. For his study, Forgas asked volunteers to watch different films and dwell on positive or negative events in their lives, designed to put them in either a good or bad mood. Next he asked them to take part in a series of tasks.
Rather than good vs. bad mood, his study might better depict being content vs. discontent. There is a third, more positive, state that is actually better at triggering the benefits Forgas associates with negative moods. As an example, imagine three scenarios driving into New York. In the first, you are hungry (slightly negative) and notice many restaurants and take note of other businesses as you keep your eyes peeled. In the second, you are content. You aren’t looking for anything, so little catches your attention. These would be consistent with Forgas’s research.
In the third example, New York is your vacation destination. You are excited and wide-eyed. You want to take everything in, not because you are feeling lack or negative, but because you are eager for the joy of the experience. Forgas did not bring his subjects to this level, so could not measure the effects of being in such an energized state.
“The Secret” has introduced the concept of the Law of Attraction, but this has often been distorted, as in getting rich: “It’s simply a matter of wanting stuff hard enough.” One could equally say, “It’s simply a matter of robbing enough banks.” Neither represents the Law of Attraction correctly.
It is wonderful that people are taking a critical look at what is being taught in this area, and it is also worth taking a critical look at the scientific research.
John Waddell, Author of John and Jeanie Fly: Living the Law of Attraction.
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wow! here i was all happy about how happy this book made me and here this person is saying this! did u even read the book sara?!?! did u?! if so u probably skip the part where they say that in asking for what you want out of life the universe will inspire you to take action.. its not all just positive thinkin! its making your self happy! lol i really dislike this article.. to me it just sounds like she tryed to use the secret and she didnt have patience.. lol
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I personally subscribe to the positive living theory of creating my reality, as well as Law of Attraction concepts. Having grown up originally thinking that negativity was DNA encoded into my genetics, my own "transformation" has had an amazing and beneficial impact in the way I feel on a day-to-day basis.
But let's face it, NOBODY manages to think positive all the time, even those who deliberately embrace all the positive living concepts that Ms. Stewart has mentioned in a very "negative" tone!
Even Louise Hay, a major proponent of positive thinking, whose movie and related literature "You Can Heal Your Life" has gained considerable fame among the Positive Thinking crowd, states on one of her motivational CDs that even HER thinking, after all these many years of practicing the technique, is about 80% positive. If the "master" of positive thinking is only up to 80%, then what about the rest of us -- even the ones who follow all the known techniques? Is it reasonable to assume that we are fortunate enough to perhaps manage a 60-40 split with the former being the percentage of positive thoughts? Then, I direct this to you, Ms. Stewart, none of us ever have to give another thought of any kind to suffering "the consequences" of thinking positive ALL of the time. None of us will probably ever achieve that complete automation of thought. After all, we are just human beings (or spiritual beings having a human experience, according to some) and so will never be perfectly positive.
Don't try to take the fun and exhilaration of going the positive route -- that journey has brought much joy to myself as well as many others!
Sheryl Schlameuss Berger
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"Vigilant Realism" and "physical reality" are precisely the problem -- neither appears to exist -- at least as we once thought. Consider String Theory with it's multiverses or even "collasping wave functions" along with the apparent dominant energy of the "vacumm" -- now again the "Ether" -- and you can see a problem with the old notions of "reality". Ms. Stewart thus predicates her argument in error. Negative thinking is based on the "intellect" of perceiving only the current multiverse -- others are possible -- and connected somehow to "the observer". How to navigate them may be hinted at both in Science and Faith. We've long known "the observer" is essential to reality. Our sad ignorance of physical reality obviates any claims based on it.
Osteen exhorts. What a luxury for those so distant from the trauma of everyday life -- that they don't sponge-up any and all encouragment they can get -- even from a weeping televangelist and canonized with the cultural authority of the clergy and our own Judeo Christian scriptures. Norman Vincent Peale would be proud. The down-trodden get a ray of hope. Science meets religion. Maybe even I need not feel so hopeless?
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Great thought provoking article! It seems the con-artists have programmed people that critical thinking can't be part of positive thinking when it reality it's a required part of positive thinking. It also reminds me of a quote from Thomas Jefferson, "The harder I work, the luckier I am." Jefferson was a Deist, that is he believed in God based on reason and Nature, not on pie in the sky nonsense.
Progress!
Bob Johnson
http://www.nypost.com/
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