Episode #6: The Negative Side of Positive Thinking

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Image via Wikipedia What could be bad about thinking positively? How about increasing our tendency to blame the victim? These are the issues we examine this week on The Psych Files.

Click the image below to see a concept map for Seligman’s Explanatory Style.

• Interesting interview with Jerome Kagan (psychology professor from Harvard) on the topic of positive psychology that appeared in Business Week

Notes on Positive Thinking

The three kinds of attributions we make are:

• Internal (or Personal) attributions: my failure (or success) has something to do with me (my skills, my abilities, my intelligence, my talents, etc.)

• Global (or Pervasive) attribution: my failure (or success) affects other parts of my life

• Stable (or Permanent) attributions: my failure (or success) continues throughout the rest of my life

Example: student fails a test:

A pessimistic student would interpret this failure as:

• Personal: I"m stupid, I"m not good at this.

• Pervasive: I"m bad at taking tests in general. I"m bad at all types of math too.

• Permanent: I"ll always fail at math tests for the rest of my life.

A more optimistic view:

• Not Personal: This test was hard. I was more tired than usual, and besides, I’m under a lot of stress right now (these are impersonal explanations that are external to the student and if true they can relieve some of the negative feelings and low motivation that can result from an off the cuff "I'm stupid" way of thinking).

• Not Pervasive: I don’t do poorly on all my tests. I’m doing well in History for example (the failure is in one area and is not pervasive)

• Not Permanent: I did well in previous math tests, so I know I can do well again in the future.

Even success could be interpreted in a pessimistic way (ex: student does well on a test):

• Not personal: I got lucky

• Not pervasive: No way I'm going to get that lucky in my other classes

• Not permanent: I'll never get that lucky again

References on the topic of Positive Thinking

• The article entitled Pathologies of Hope can be found in the Februrary 2007 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

• It was written by Barbara Ehrenreich. Click here to go to her website. She also hosts a fascinating blog which you can subscribe to from her website.

• The article on The Secret was written by Jerry Adler and can be found in the March 5th 2007 issue of Newsweek.

• Learn more about Albert Ellis and Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy at the Albert Ellis Institute. Here’s where you can hear the whole program from NPR on Albert Ellis. This program is narrated by NPR’s Alix Spiegel.

• If you want to learn more about Martin Seligman, you can find his book at on iTunes about Learned Helplessness or learn about Learned Helplessness at Audible.com.

Quote of the week

This week’s quote comes from page 27 of the book “Contentment” by Johnson and Ruhl, which can be found at Amazon.

“Many people in our modern world are faced with the awful dilemma of choosing between unreality or being left alone. If you don’t play along with the excesses of our time, you risk being ignored or even tossed aside.”

Video of the Week

This week’s video about sex differences is called “How to Shower – men vs. women.

Tagged as: Positive Thinking