News: Don't Tell Me to Cheer Up

Seeing the glass half full is effortless for some and nearly impossible for others. One likely reason? As a new report in Abnormal Psychology finds, a standard tactic of positive thinkers—reappraising the meaning of a bad situation—may backfire for habitual worriers.

Researchers detected this effect by showing women a series of negative and neutral images and monitoring their encephalographic (EEG) responses. (Men were left out of the study to prevent sex differences in brain activity from clouding results.) In some instances, participants were informed that a troubling image was coming up and that they should try to think about it in a positive way. If the image showed a man holding a knife to a woman's throat, for example, they might imagine that the woman escaped.

This reframing was tricky for worriers. Increases in two measures of electrical activity in their brains indicated both above-average anticipation of unpleasant images and heightened emotional arousal during the reappraisal task. For more positive thinkers, indicators of arousal decreased.

Telling worriers to "look on the bright side" may be the wrong approach. For worry-prone people, says lead researcher and Michigan State University psychologist Jason Moser, it may be better to take an objective, detached view of the situation: How would they advise a friend facing similar challenges?