POSITIVE THINKING – AND ALL THAT CRAP
The gifted illustrator Mary Engelbreit once said: ‘If you don’t like something, change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.’ By reframing what you dislike as a positive, assuming such spin-doctoring were indeed possible, you’d be able to deceive yourself that things really weren’t that bad. Engelbreit’s supposition, however, is mild in comparison to that of Norman Vincent Peale, the famous minister and author, who exhorted his disciples thusly: ‘Change your thoughts and you change your world.’ His work is not dissimilar to that of the infamously misleading book and documentary The Secret, which led millions to believe that if you just think positively – if you really, truly have faith in a specific ambition with all your heart – you can gain whatever it is you wish. You can manifest a mansion! You can manifest the perfect car spot! You can even manifest a career as a stand-up comedian! All you have to do is, say, put up a photo of that to which you aspire and, lo and behold, you’ll have it before you can utter ‘effort, luck and talent’, all of which inarguably have a far greater influence on one’s chances of achieving pretty much anything.
And perhaps there is nothing inherently wrong in the words of the esteemed British prime minister Winston Churchill: ‘I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.’ Except that there actually is much use in being something else, as this chapter will demonstrate. As for the American philosopher Elbert Hubbard’s suggestion that ‘positive anything is better than negative thinking’ – well, that isn’t entirely accurate. Or positive.
Even though positive thinking was around for centuries prior to the advent of the positive psychology movement, it’s quite possible it’s the latter that has elevated its status and given it an aura of credibility in the eyes of those seeking an escape from reality. Martin Seligman, from whose pregnant mind the positive psychology construct was born, ascribed six so-called virtues to his ground-breaking philosophy. These were (i) wisdom and knowledge; (ii) courage; (iii) love and humanity; (iv) justice; (v) temperance; and (vi) spirituality and transcendence. One can’t really argue with any of that, even though there is evidence to suggest that those virtues were generated by methods that are the antithesis of scientific rigour.41 Regardless, it’s fair to assume that wisdom ought to be valued; that courage is what’s needed more of in this world; ditto with love, justice and maybe even spirituality. But to take Seligman’s prized work and use it as a reason to discount the ‘virtues’ of its polar opposite is potentially damaging, especially when you consider that Seligman himself has written that ‘positive psychology is a supplement to negative psychology, not a substitute’, and that it’s a practice that ordinarily comes at the cost of ‘less realism’.42 To focus exclusively on the latter discounts the benefits that arise from embracing a balance of the two. It also risks labelling the stereotyped alternative – negativity – as always detrimental to one’s wellbeing, which is evidently not true at all.
The culmination of this is an expectation among people – and, in fact, a pervasive society-wide pressure – that we must constantly be positive, happy and optimistic, neglecting of course the impossibility of achieving that objective, and the deep sense of personal failure that comes with the realisation that one is not as positive, happy and optimistic as one ought to be.
That’s not to say that working towards a state of positivity, happiness and optimism is not a worthwhile pursuit. It certainly could be, and much research proves the advantages that result, especially in relation to, say, strengthened coping mechanisms and better health. But looking at those studies on their own ignores ‘a picture that is more complicated – and more useful – than “optimism is good” and “pessimism is bad”’. Especially because there are various empirically validated types of optimism and pessimism. Research has shown, for instance, that defensive pessimists (those who set ‘unrealistically low expectations and then devote considerable energy to . . . reflecting on all the possible [negative] outcomes’) perform just as well as strategic optimists (those who ‘set optimistic expectations for their own performance and actively avoid extensive reflection’). That’s because the defensive pessimists consider – and plan for – all the potentially adverse consequences. One approach isn’t necessarily always better than the other. It’s just that each of us is motivated differently, such that if you were to try to cheer up a defensive pessimist, your actions would likely decrease their performance, in the same way that killing the mood of a strategic optimist is likely to affect theirs. This research ‘makes clear that “one size fits all” prescriptions for optimism and negative thinking do not, in fact, fit some people very well’.43 Or at all.
The scholars who authored that last reference go further, asserting that ‘optimism and positive thinking can derail us if they lead us to ignore or discount important cues and warnings’. Their prior studies demonstrated that these cues are most acute in relation to performance. Strategic optimists, they found, were more likely to remember positive feedback, which reinforced in their mind the diminished requirement to focus on self-improvement. As usually happens when things go well, optimism gets the credit for any success – but when things fall apart, as they often do, personal blame is frequently avoided.
Now let’s move away from optimism and pessimism for a moment and focus on what is a more common occurrence: bad moods. These are the intense short-lived episodes that seemingly have no cause, but which the rah-rah positive types would have you believe should be avoided if you want to maximise your powers of manifestation. A number of academic studies, however, indicate quite strongly that being in a bad mood can actually generate a number of specific outcomes that can be deemed beneficial in a variety of contexts.44
•The first (and strongest) is an improved memory. That’s because those who feel grumpy tend to pay closer attention to their surroundings. In one experiment, shoppers were asked to recall the features of a store they had just visited. Those who were surveyed on cold, rainy days were able to recollect the store’s interior in remarkable detail. Those who were surveyed on sunny, warm days weren’t able to remember as much. This heightened attention also means that those who are feeling temporarily negative are less likely to take on board false or misleading information, which tends to infiltrate happier people at a far greater rate.
•The second characteristic is improved judgemental accuracy. An example of that is when we form judgements based on an initial perception we develop, thereby ignoring information that comes afterwards, which may actually be in conflict with the judgement we’ve prematurely set in concrete. In one experiment, judges were asked to form an impression about an individual based on details that described the person as either an extrovert or an introvert. A bias was certainly present – unless the judge was in a negative mood, in which case the bias was ‘completely eliminated’, thereby resulting in fairer judgements.
•The third is reduced gullibility. Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than when people are confronted by urban myths, rumours and deception. In one experiment, those who were feeling sad were less likely to accept facial expressions as genuine, which meant they were at less risk of being deceived. In another experiment, when sad participants watched a recording of an interrogation, they were better at accurately identifying those who were being insincere.
•The fourth is reduced stereotyping. In what is inherently a confronting experiment, the researchers asked happy and sad people to shoot at other people (in a simulation, of course) who they thought were carrying guns. Some of those targets were made to look Muslim. The result was that there ‘was a significantly greater tendency overall to shoot at Muslims; however, negative [moods] actually reduced, and positive [moods] increased, this discriminative tendency’. The reason was the same as that noted above: negative people are more cognisant of detail.
•The fifth is greater motivation. When sad and happy people were given a challenging task to complete, those who felt sad persevered longer at the task and got more of it correct.
•The sixth may sound counterintuitive, but here it is anyway. Those in a negative state of mind are actually the beneficiaries of interpersonal advantages, such as, surprisingly, politeness. That’s because they’re more inclined to phrase their requests in a cautious manner, taking care to set their preferences articulately.
•Now here’s the seventh: increased fairness. Experiments have shown that positive people tend to be more selfish, whereas negative people tend to be more equitable. In various games, during which participants had to share resources they had accumulated, it was the happier folk who were more inclined to hoard their kitty for themselves. Negative people, in contrast, were more likely to share it around.
•And here’s another: more effective persuasion. There was one experiment in which happy and sad people were asked to write persuasive arguments, such as a letter to students making the case for an increase in school fees. You can predict the result, I’m sure. Those who were classified as sad were able to outperform their happier colleagues. ‘Their arguments featured more concrete and tangible information’, the scholar found; also, ‘arguments produced by sad persuaders actually worked better in producing real attitude change in naïve participants’.
If we look at the aforementioned benefits in unison – memory, judgement, non-gullibility, anti-discrimination, motivation, politeness, fairness and persuasiveness – it isn’t too much of a stretch to conclude that, actually, negative thinking can be quite beneficial for one’s future success. For these findings, we have to thank Professor Joseph Forgas of the University of New South Wales, who would have to be Australia’s (and perhaps the world’s) most eminent researcher into the realities of a bad mood: the fact that it isn’t really all that bad, and that ‘the unrelenting pursuit of happiness may often be self-defeating’.
So the next time someone patronisingly tells you to smile more or to just think positive thoughts, don’t believe them right away. They might have a point, but their absolutist messages are most probably hollow.
All this leads us, then, to reconfigure the motivational quotes that began this chapter. Mary Engelbreit’s is more accurate when it’s edited in the following way:
‘If you don’t like something, change it; if you can’t change it, free yourself of it.’
Norman Vincent Peale’s is better off like this:
‘Change your thoughts and you risk changing your realistic sense of the world.’
Even though I’m reticent to edit the great Winston Churchill, I must:
‘I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else, unless one values memory, judgement, non-gullibility, anti-discrimination, motivation, politeness, fairness and persuasiveness.’
Elbert Hubbard, too, needs to have his quotation reworded:
‘Positive anything is not necessarily better than negative thinking. Context is what determines which is more appropriate.’
Ah, that’s better. All of a sudden I feel much more positive.
41B.S. Held, 2005, ‘The “virtues” of positive psychology’, Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 1–34.
42M.E.P. Seligman, 2002, Authentic Happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment, Free Press, New York.
43J.K. Norem & E.C. Chang, 2002, ‘The positive psychology of negative thinking’, Journal of Clinical Psychology, vol. 58, no. 9, pp. 993–1001.
44J.P. Forgas, 2013, ‘Don’t worry, be sad! On the cognitive, motivational, and interpersonal benefits of negative mood’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 225–232.