Why Positive Thinking May be Meaningless.

In the age of 21st century, we are fed up by wallpaper-able positive quotes with artsy typography from Tumblr and Pinterest quotes like this:

All people, at times, eaten-up with grief, over-flooded with joy, or tremble with anger. Most of us are taught from early age to manage these emotions by sharing and reveling in the positive ones, while we should repressing or apologizing for the negative ones. Growing up, I remember there was this ESQ session during my sophomore year presented about the Strength of Thinking Positive kinda video claimed that just thinking positively while thinking about the things we desire can bring the changes we want! Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 classic, The Power of Positive Thinking, sold 5 million copies and was a New York Times bestseller for 186 weeks. Now you’ll find numerous articles resonance the same ideas like Peale in any platform. Even many people think that the key to success is to cultivate and always maintain an optimistic way of thinking. (I’ve been thinking all day that somehow Cole Sprouse would be in front of my house carrying Big Mac, never happened.)

To be frankly honest, we shouldn’t have to think positive. Recent developments in Psychology have found potential problems with the suggestion of positive thinking. Some experiments conducted by Gabriele Oettingen & Thomas A. Wadden in 1991 shows those who apply positive thinking in trying to achieve their goals often get worse results than those who do not apply positive thinking (Read the study here). Why doesn’t positive thinking work the way you might assume? The study discovered that dreaming 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 your goals. In another words, positive thinking “deceived” our minds, assume as if we “already” achieved what we wanted, thus weakening our tenacity in trying to achieve it. On the contrary, some critics of positive thinking have advised people to discard all happy talk and “get real” by dwelling on the challenges or obstacles. But this is too extreme a correction. Studies have shown that this strategy doesn’t work any better than entertaining positive fantasy. So it seems like just asking people to think realistically also does not give any better results.

So what should we do? There’s a more hybrid approach to think everything positively realistic. It’s called “Mental Contrasting”. Mental Contrasting means that you do positive thinking (imagining the results you desire are already achieved) with also reflecting all obstacles you may face in order to achieve your goals. The same scientist conduct more experiments about Mental Contrasting. The experiment shows that when participants have performed mental contrasting with reasonable, potentially attainable wishes, they have come away more energized and achieved better results compared with participants who either positively fantasized or dwelt on the obstacles.

Another study conducted by Elizabeth Kneeland and colleagues in 2016 discovered that people who think emotions are easily influenced and changeable are more likely to blame themselves for the negative emotions they feel than people who think emotions are fixed and out of their control. In another words, positive thinking may cause people feelings of failure and depression because they are implicitly “blaming” themselves if they are not happy (Read the study here). For example, we are feeling devastated because we didn’t pass the exam. This sadness is then compounded by feelings of guilt for ourselves because we feel the sadness itself. We’re feeling guilty in being sad, because again, we are told by that positive quotes over and over again to radiate positivity only. We will think “I should’ve think positive but why am i feeling sad?” It feels like receiving two punches at a time. One because you failed the exam, and second because the guilty feeling of not being happy and positive.

A Harvard Medical School professor and psychologist Susan David emphasized that “by sending out the message that our thoughts are responsible for creating our health, well-being, and reality, we are overvaluing the power of our thoughts, while making people feel guilty or blaming themselves when something bad happens to them. They feel it is because they weren’t positive enough.”

She furthermore explained that if we push away thoughts and emotions, they will come back magnified. For example, there is a study that shows what happened when someone who was trying to give up smoking tried not to think about cigarettes. What happened? They started to dream about cigarettes. This is a phenomenon which in psychology is called “leakage”. It is literally the idea that when you try not to think about something, that thing comes back, but amplified. So the idea that we could somehow push our emotions aside to be happy doesn’t make sense. (Read more on her interview here)

A Psychology Professor from Wellesley College, Julie Norem created a theory called “Defensive pessimism”. Defensive pessimists lower their expectations to help prepare themselves for the worst. Aren’t we already familiar with that? It gives us explanation about why some people give much better responses toward negative events. Because by thinking of things that not according to the plan, these people actually reduce their worries and are often able to anticipate these obstacles. Wellesley College also offers you a mini-quiz to know are you one of Defensive pessimism by answering 12 short questions.

Norem’s study discovered that “when people are being defensively pessimistic, they set low expectations, but then they take the next step which is to think through in concrete and vivid ways what exactly might go wrong. What we’ve seen in the research is if they do this in a specific, vivid way, it helps them plan to avoid the disaster. They end up performing better than if they didn’t use the strategy. It helps them direct their anxiety toward productive activity.” (Read more on her interview here)

Although not everyone are suitable with Defensive pessimism, it gives us another shot, that, also, not all people could work as positive thinking may suggest. Imagine we’re a device or a gadget with different specifications. Not all Operating System could work suitably with our device. These OS are the way we perceive and believe how we should reacts to negative emotions. Some of them find peace thinking positive because it motivates people to go out and do things, and that’s great. But for those who are exhausted of people trying to tell them to think positive and see the brightside in everything, this couldn’t work.