The proposition that the positive psychology method of “Just thinking as if…” makes sense. But how about the more active prescription of “Just doing as if…”? Say for example somebody who is depressed visits a therapist. And the therapist finds out through their dialogue that person has become housebound. So apart from psychotherapy, the therapist prescribes a yoga or an aerobics class at a gym. In other words, she would be asking the patient to just do the class as if she were not depressed.

It just seems to me that how we act has as much an impact on how we think vs. looking at it from the thought down direction. If that is true, then it would appear that positive psychology with an action oriented context would universally applicable.

I'll need to think about these studies further to make sense of them in relation to what positive psychology is saying....

My initial sense is that, while defensive pessimism may be an effective coping mechanism, doesn't it require lots of work/energy to use? Couldn't working through the deeper issues underlying the anxiety issue may be more effective in the long run? I think Positive Psychology implies such work.

Blabbing about your worries also makes you unpleasant to be around. No one likes to be subjected to the Debbie Downer syndrom all the time. I guess you can worry all you want, just keep it to yourself.

But my understanding of PP is that it embraces the good AND bad- and isn't a study of happiology or popular psychology. Maybe most of the academic and general community aren't ready to buy into resilience and finding the good in things.

Thanks for posting this. As a woman who has struggled with infertility for 8+ years, I cannot count the number of times people told me that I need to think positively (like that would help embryos implant and then stay in my uterus). It was extremely hurtful to have a medical problem treated as though it were a personal weakness (I couldn't 'relax' or even as a joke 'Should I have a talk with your husband?' as if we didn't know how to have intercourse properly.)

No book is as hated among infertiles as 'the Secret, which seems to indicate that being infertile (or dying of cancer) indicates inferiority.

I always responded that I was extremely positive for the first 3 years and the first 3 pregnancies (which I lost).

I'm sure that some "positive psychologists" deserve a criticism like the one in this article, but to generalize is as if it applies to the entire science of positive psychology is unfair in my opinion. Positive psychology, if done right, is probably really for everyone. It's just that everyone requires a different approach, which are still a part of the positive psychology. If a strategy doesn't work it's just means that the science wasn't applied correctly. Positive psychology is complicated.

Other than that one has to ask whether or not getting an A under stress is better than peacefully getting a B, C, whatever. Which is more important, which is healthier?

Similarly, to LB above, the kind of positive psychology that would help you would probably be more focused on getting you to be more satisfied with what you already got, and to try to make the process of getting what you want (motherhood?) a more peaceful experience for you. (By changing the way you look at your "personal weakness", and generally modifying your perspective for example.)

My comments are about what the "new research" about positive self statements actually measures. Assuming for a moment that the results with small numbers of participants can be replicated, the study tells us almost nothing about positive self-statements as they might be used in any counselling or self affirming activity. The experimental situation is unusual in the extent to which a single positive statement is buried in the midst of dozens of negative statements, at least for one of the low esteem groups, the key group in the study. The authors and commentators appear not to have thought too much about the context in which the self-affirmation statements were made, but it is clear that low self esteem people had been responding to questions about how they felt about themselves, which by definition were negative responses and were making such statements even at the time they were supposed to say the one single positive statement to themselves. It is difficult to think of a real life situation that is comparable. Alternatively consider a counselling situation where a therapist will be emotionally supportive (and as Dr Wood has argued such social input this is the key to positive self-esteem) and will encourage new and positive ways of thinking about oneself. The content of the dialogue is likely to involve rational analysis and justification for these new ways of thinking (rather than a single confronting emotional idea) and in this way might present many believable, acceptable ways to think about oneself. The experiment, on the other hand, is so far removed from such a real life situation that it is difficult to determine what it may tell us about anything at all. It certainly doesn't tell us that positive affirmations don't work, except for one very unusual, artificial, experimental situation.

Regarding the article: the author doesn't seem to have a lot of depth or familiarity into research regarding positive psychology. If you're going to write critically about a field, educate yourself in it first.

Regarding LB's comment: "No book is as hated among infertiles as 'the Secret, which seems to indicate that being infertile (or dying of cancer) indicates inferiority."

Where in the 'secret' does it refer to being infertile equal to being inferior? I think that type of statement is based on either your own or other people's interpretation. The whole point of applying positive psychology strategies is because looking at what is not working isn't particularly empowering. Taking responsibility of what you are putting your attention on is what influence how we feel and our attitude and thus the quality of our life.

The ability to impact the content of our attention is what we have most control over. Trying to control anything else, like other people's opinions or perceptions, is an exercise that drains energy and doesn't work most of the time.

People that apply affirmations while their feelings and attention or in disharmony with the semantic content of their affirmation is naturally hardly useful. If you can't learn how to feel good or how to put your attention on the things you want, you are somewhat stuck with the thoughts that don't make you happy. It's likewise pretty hard to think a positive thought when you feel poorly. And that is where most people get angry at people that point out you should 'think positively' and criticize fluffy sounding movies like the 'secret'.

Jumping from one end of the spectrum (negative) to the other (positive) doesn't easily happen in one jump. Especially if you are trying to talk yourself there. A more solid approach is trying to feel incrementally better by stating slightly better feeling thoughts. In some cases that might mean going from stating depressed thoughts to angry thoughts, since angry thoughts are a step up from depression. It would be interesting to a study done where participants with low self esteem apply affirmations that affirm a slightly better version of their baseline thoughts and ideas about themselves.

An even better approach is to not use language at all and just feel your way to a better state. This is why meditation is so popular because it doesn't involve qualitive verbal statements, the whole point there is to be thoughtless, or at the very least minimally involved with evaluating perceived realities.

I have been in contact with Dr. Wood and have expressed my concern about the methodology of this study. Ironically, that approach has not been detailed in any of the articles that have jumped on the bandwagon claiming this study denies the validity of positive thinking as a solution to negative thinking.

The study, in my mind, failed to grasp the process required for "positive statements" to impact the thinking of a depressed person. Subjects were questioned about their mood during the cognitive dissonance that is always sure to occur during an attempt to shift thinking.

As someone who turned my life around using affirmations and other tools and now works to help others do the same, I can state that this research is preliminary, incomplete, and far from conclusive.

My view is that the research should continue and that a methodology conducive to a true study of this question should be devised to examine the validity of these findings.

This study and the media feeding that has followed leaves millions of depressed people with the impression that thinking positive, empowering thoughts is not a viable solution for them. I am living proof that this is not so.

The idea that these people should be left to wallow in the realism of their depressive thoughts is a sad and unwarranted message. Yes, change is hard, but change is part of human potential. To tell someone obsessed with negative thoughts that thinking better thoughts is "dangerous" or "fruitless" (as many articles about this study have) is the height of irresponsibility.

I would hope that this research continues and that studies measuring the true efficacy of affirmations as a tool can be conducted. 20 years of my life and my interactions with many, many people tell me that such research will demonstrate that sensible positive thinking is an option and a way to the light for those suffering, as I once did.

I'm a firm believer that thoughts expand and if you concentrate on the negative that is what u get....Remember Norman Vincent Peal....I facilitate substance abuse groups and the last thing I talk about is substance abuse..I'd rather build on positivity...forming good relationships..assertiveness...communication...prevention..finding the shame that binds someone to the abuse....it makes sense to me...

It seems as though the author of this article thinks positive psychology = positive thinking. It is not.
http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/faqs.htm
3. Is positive psychology the same as positive thinking?
Positive psychology is different from positive thinking in three significant ways. First, positive psychology is grounded in empirical and replicable scientific study. Second, positive thinking urges positivity on us for all times and places, but positive psychology does not. Positive psychology recognizes that in spite of the advantages of positive thinking, there are times when negative or realistic thinking is appropriate. Studies find that optimism is associated with better health, performance, longevity, and social success (Seligman, 1991; Lyubomirsky, King & Diener, 2005), but there is evidence that in some situations negative thinking leads to more accuracy and being accurate can have important consequences (Alloy, Abramson, & Chiara, 2000). Optimistic thinking can be associated with an underestimation of risks (Peterson & Vaidya, 2003). For example, we do not necessarily want a pilot or air traffic controller to be an optimist when deciding whether to take off during a storm.
The third distinction between positive thinking and positive psychology is that many scholars of positive psychology have spent decades working on the “negative” side of things – depression, anxiety, trauma, etc. We do not view positive psychology as a replacement for traditional psychology, but merely as a supplement to the hard-won gains of traditional psychology.

Scott,

As usual, a very thought provoking article. As someone who does research in the realm of positive psychology, I appreciate the criticisms and the caveats in your remarks.

I am always amazed at how quick people interested or invested in positive psychology are to attack critics. As you mention, not all of the research is problematic, not everyone in the field ignores individual differences, and not every intervention focuses on positive affirmations.

That being said, far too many people ignore individual differences and far too many interventions focus solely on positive thinking. It would be disingenuous to say otherwise. But I would argue that this same level of rigidity can be applied to much in clinical psychology. Most scientists study variables not people. How many treatment studies examine types of people that respond differently as opposed to variables that might predict who responds better? Are we interested in people, variables, or both? How many clinical interventions to treat anxiety, depression, and eating disorders rely on cognitive retraining when there is considerable evidence that many of these techniques might be unnecessary? If they are unnecessary, we are talking about a waste of finite time and energy that can be used in more productive ways to enhance the quality of people's lives. And speaking of quality of life, how many clinical psychologists doing research on interventions broaden their outcomes beyond symptom reduction to test whether there is an impact on the quality of people's lives? That is, studying how treatments influence psychological and social well-being in daily life. The quality of everyday social interactions, the ability to extract pleasure from positive events, the ability to be open and grow from challenging events, and so on.

I am often disappointed to find great scientists use a loose set of criteria for the treatments and pet theories and constructs that they have an allegiance toward and different stricter criteria for data that support anything else. This is not a straw man. Many people favoring CBT quickly attack a meta-analysis finding support for interpersonal or mindfulness therapies, going so far as to rally together authors to publish letters to the editor. Do they levy the same standards and criticisms when a meta-analysis is published supporting CBT? How many dissect the data to find that they are often just as flawed (seee Wampold, Imel, & Miller, 2009)?

I suspect you might agree with much of what I wrote. Keep on writing, I'll be reading.

cheers,
Todd

others wise we risk not moving forward towards healing.

So a process that only focuses on negative or positive... is lacking 1/2 the equation.

Good article.