Positive thinking's negative results | Hacker News Reader

Positive thinking's negative results

economist.com

66 pointspj22 comments

This seems to reiterate an argument I once read against positive affirmations (no longer recall the source). The idea is that every time you consciously make an affirmation, your subconscious corrects it, as in:

I am an outgoing person. - no, I'm not.

The subconscious wins, and what actually gets affirmed is that you're not an outgoing person. This article seems to suggest that this effect primarily occurs when the affirmation is sufficiently different from one's self image. (But do we generally need to affirm things we already believe?)

Not only are you confirming the not outgoing, but the dishonesty compounds the mental negatives, making you feel even worse!

Indeed. I'm subject to depression, and though this can and has led to negativity that later translates into negative outcomes, I've found it far better to accept my periods of gloom and just acknowledge the fact of my thinking patterns than to try to replace them with ones I don't buy into.

It's not that the optimistic views are wrong, necessarily (or that I'm universally pessimistic), but some approaches just reek of bullshit. I'm all for the 'little engine that could' approach of giving yourself permission and encouragement to succeed. But quite a few of the modern motivation gurus seem to espouse a sociopathic level of self-regard that reminds me of religious fanaticism. Don't even get me started on the 'God wants you to be rich' people.

I imagine there's a significant border-zone where the affirmation doesn't fire a reactionary denial, and so probably successfully reinforces itself and becomes truer.

Indeed, this is what I was thinking. Perhaps the key is to successively (and slowly) converge on the positive.

I don't believe that to be the case. Our temperaments are quite hard-wired in our brains.

IMO a better approach is to:

- honestly learn about oneself, including the sides one or others might deem negative

- accept oneself as such

- learn to balance things in life so that one's personality fits best amongst them

This way for example an intravert person can push their "outgoing side" a bit when it's needed, charging their batteries while that's not necessary, and make most of their lives doing something where solitary is a benefit.

When the everyday experience is positive, the personality tends to shift towards positive. But that is not because of telling oneself "I can do it, I can do it" but because of the daily experience simply indicates success.

Another example might be a person who wants to start a business. While one might benefit by "just doing it" and smashing obstacles one by one, another one might benefit most by making a careful study before doing the "move". Neither of these persons probably don't perform optimally (who of us does?), since the first one doesn't think enough before acting, and the other thinks too far. But for both of them, their approach is the most benefical, since in both cases their confidence to what they are doing rises the most, and on a realistic basis.

"Our temperaments are quite hard-wired in our brains"

Yeah, but the wiring can be changed. I used to be introverted; now I'm quite extroverted. I slowly changed.

It seems a bit like sarcasm; the more positive its literally meaning, the more cutting the "intended" meaning.

I agree. Moreover, I think it would have been useful to measure variables indicating emotional state as the affirmation is uttered. If you feel crippled when you utter "I'm a lovable person", chances are your subconscious is saying "no you're not". It is also known that jumping from "Nobody loves me" to "I'm lovable" isn't possible for the most. You need to take small steps, each of which needs to be coupled with a better feeling.

Worthwhile for the image and caption alone.

This reminds me: I'm a bit tired of quick reactionary articles in the news that come in response to relatively minor sociological, psychological, or medical studies. These new developments are indeed interesting, but they're often treated as factual rather than small nuggets of scientific exploration.

In this case, anyway, I'm glad that The Economist maintains a reasonable perspective, that this is a single limited study conducted by an individual as opposed to new, dazzling, irrefutable Facts.

Note that the affirmations practice doubted in the submitted article, based on "self-esteem," is distinct from the Three Good Things exercise developed by Martin E. P. Seligman.

http://www.cabinetgirls.com/Three_Good_Things_Exercise.pdf

http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/jen-hausmann/20070403...

Seligman has done considerable research on the development of "optimism," a distinct concept from self-esteem, and as former president of the American Psychological Association has done much to champion the "positive psychology" movement, a research-based look at how well-functioning individuals function well, and how all of us can learn to function better in the stress of daily life. Seligman would be the first to decry most school "self-esteem" programs--youth suicide rates went up rather than down during the decades when those were implemented--but he thinks there is a research base to show that improvement of optimism reduces depression and suicide and builds problem-solving ability.

Try adding "because..." after the "I am...".

For those who haven't read Cialdini [1], this is a refernce to a study which shows that asking:

"Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?"

lets you cut the line 60% of the time, but

"Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?"

Lets you cut the line 93% of the time. A more extensive quote from the book is [2]. To me, the latter just sounds a little more polite.

1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006124189X/

2. http://www.hodu.com/one-word.shtml

Influence is the most thought-provoking, and occasionally uncomfortable, book I've read in years. Absolutely loved it. Friends got sick of me recounting the anecdotes from the book, because I just couldn't stop talking about it.

Please up vote me, because I would feel much better with a higher karma.

Conclusion from the article:

"Dr Wood suggests that positive self-statements cause negative moods in people with low self-esteem because they conflict with those people’s views of themselves. When positive self-statements strongly conflict with self-perception, she argues, there is not mere resistance but a reinforcing of self-perception. People who view themselves as unlovable find saying that they are so unbelievable that it strengthens their own negative view rather than reversing it. Given that many readers of self-help books that encourage positive self-statements are likely to suffer from low self-esteem, they may be worse than useless."

I find to avoid the negative reaction, you can use "becoming". Instead of saying "I'm a lovable person" use "I'm becoming a lovable person"

And also instead of using adjectives, use something that goes for identity, instead of, "I'm becoming charming" use "I'm becoming a charmer"

The only valid conclusion to be drawn out of this 'study' is that push polling works. If you get people to affirm a view and then you ask then a logically related question they are likely to bend the answer to be logically consistent with the first statement. For them to go on and try correlate these results with a 'past study' stretches things beyond dubious.

This is an interesting data point, however one key factor in repeating positive affirmations is the repetition.

I'm not sure you can discredit the idea with a one-time test like this. It's kind of like getting a bunch of people to do push-ups once, and trying to draw some conclusion about strength training.

Perhaps choosing affirmations that are believable in terms of the specific person's self image would show mood increases. e.g.

I'm not all bad and if I could find love once, there's a real chance I can find it again.

Wasn't it Freud who proposed that depressed people are actually quite perceptive: they simply realize how bad things are for them?

This seems to be in the same vein. If you have low self-esteem, you know you suck, and no amount of telling yourself otherwise is going to change that.

I believe the theory of cognitive therapy relies on repeated instances of self-reinforcement, not just saying happy thoughts when somebody rings a bell.

What is it with psych studies and bell-ringing, anyway? Get a buzzer or a blinking light or something already.

It is old as a dirt - "People see what they want to see" - but reality is always different and it destroys delusions and brings pain.

The "solution" also comes from begining of the time - "be selfless", just do one thing at a time (leave anything else, including self-estim aside for this period of time) and do it well, or "just do it".

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