Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking

************************************************

The never-ending talk about how people behave when told things holds some interesting truths.  One is what I was once told and I have come to believe that whatever people are told they cannot do, they will automatically seek to do.  Human mind sucks.  If you tell people they ought not to stand in the middle of street for a while when crossing it, some people automatically begin doing it on occasion without even seeking a rationale.  The rebellion theory holds some truth but I think there is more to it.  I commented on a blog once when Foie Grae was being boycotted and was booed down for stating that drawing attention only makes the position stronger.  That is how all contraversial efforts have grown over the history.  The more they are opposed the stronger they get and eventually become more legitimate.  That is history of most religions and cults also.  Another thing which is closer to this article is I used to work in retail and when a customer would visit and was offered help the majority would decline automatically because they are programmed to ward off salespeople.  I changed my line instead and would say to a client entering after I had greeted them "You don't need any help, right?" and almost everyone would give me the automatic decline response but 95% of them would process the comment and a second later would say they actually needed help with such and such.  My approach implied they know what they are doing and would not need help now or later.  The ego was being boosted and they would have to lower themselves to admit they needed something or help.  Most people automatically stopped and used the help they needed and were being written off of.  The human mind does many things and a good many of them make no sense.
************************************************

In the past 50 years, people with mental problems have spent untold millions of hours in therapists' offices, and millions more reading self-help books, trying to turn negative thoughts like "I never do anything right" into positive ones like "I can succeed." For many people — including well-educated, highly trained therapists, for whom "cognitive restructuring" is a central goal — the very definition of psychotherapy is the process of changing self-defeating attitudes into constructive ones.

But was Norman Vincent Peale right? Is there power in positive thinking? A study just published in the journalPsychological Science says trying to get people to think more positively can actually have the opposite effect: it can simply highlight how unhappy they are.(See pictures of people mourning the death of Michael Jackson.)

The study's authors, Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick, begin with a common-sense proposition: when people hear something they don't believe, they are not only often skeptical but adhere even more strongly to their original position. A great deal of psychological research has shown this, but you need look no further than any late-night bar debate you've had with friends: when someone asserts that Sarah Palin is brilliant, or that the Yankees are the best team in baseball, or that Michael Jackson was not a freak, others not only argue the opposing position, but do so with more conviction than they actually hold. We are an argumentative species.

And so we constantly argue with ourselves. Many of us are reluctant to revise our self-judgment, especially for the better. In 1994, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a paper showing that when people get feedback that they believe is overly positive, they actually feel worse, not better. If you try to tell your dim friend that he has the potential of an Einstein, he won't think he's any smarter; he will probably just disbelieve your contradictory theory, hew more closely to his own self-assessment and, in the end, feel even dumber. In one fascinating 1990s experiment demonstrating this effect — called cognitive dissonance in official terms — a team including psychologist Joel Cooper of Princeton asked participants to write hard-hearted essays opposing funding for the disabled. When these participants were later told they were compassionate, they felt even worse about what they had written.(See how to prevent illness at any age.)

For the new paper, Wood, Lee and Perunovic measured 68 students on their self-esteem. The students were then asked to write down their thoughts and feelings for four minutes. Every 15 seconds during those four minutes, one randomly assigned group of the students heard a bell. When they heard it, they were supposed to tell themselves, "I am a lovable person."

Those with low self-esteem — precisely the kind of people who do not respond well to positive feedback but tend to read self-help books or attend therapy sessions encouraging positive thinking — didn't feel better after those 16 bursts of self-affirmation. In fact, their self-evaluations and moods were significantly more negative than those of the people not asked to remind themselves of their lovability.(See pictures of couples in love.)

This effect can also occur when experiments are more open-ended. The authors cite a 1991 study in which participants were asked to recall either six or 12 examples of instances when they behaved assertively. "Paradoxically," the authors write, "those in the 12-example condition rated themselves as lessassertive than did those in the six-example condition. Participants apparently inferred from their difficulty retrieving 12 examples that they must not be very assertive after all."

Wood, Lee and Perunovic conclude that unfavorable thoughts about ourselves intrude very easily, especially among those of us with low self-esteem — so easily and so persistently that even when a positive alternative is presented, it just underlines how awful we believe we are.

The paper provides support for newer forms of psychotherapy that urge people to accept their negative thoughts and feelings rather than try to reject and fight them. In the fighting, we not only often fail but can also make things worse. Mindfulness and meditation techniques, in contrast, can teach people to put their shortcomings into a larger, more realistic perspective. Call it the power of negative thinking.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909019,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

Posted via email from cushsf’s posterous