It Might Just Be the Time to Try Some Positivity

There are many reasons to feel pessimistic about life in general, from the surge of COVID cases to concerns about the climate. You may find yourself feeling just as stressed, if not more so, than you did at the outset of the 2020 decade. A combination of disruptions to daily life, if not exposure to tragic and life-threatening circumstances, can put you in a chronically dejected mood. With those stresses uppermost in your mind, you may find yourself being the “Debbie Downer” in almost every social gathering, from family occasions (or videochats) to weekly staff meetings. It may even be hard for you to force a smile when talking to someone you’re meeting for the first time, when normally you would try to form a good impression by seeming friendly.

Before becoming completely discouraged, however, it might help to know that your negativity doesn’t have to assume permanent proportions. You were happy once—can you be happy again? And if so, how can you jump-start the process?

Perhaps the first step to flipping a positivity switch is to recognize why it’s important to make the effort. Think about the people you know who you like to be around. What type of worldview do they seem to communicate? Do they seem to make an effort to put a positive spin on situations? Does it, in fact, amaze you that they can be going through times as tough as yours, yet remain cheerful?

According to Sapienza University of Rome’s Annalisa Theodorou and colleagues (2021), the benefits of being a positive person extend far beyond an individual’s own state of mind, making it more likely that those in their environment feel better too. Indeed, the Italian authors propose, high levels of positivity by any one individual in a group can help lower the temperature of everyone else, making it more likely that conflicts will be resolved. That positive individual may not be trying to win a popularity contest, but by helping reduce conflict, it’s likely that other people will naturally gravitate toward them.

Positivity and the Conservation of Resources Model

The authors define positivity as a combination of “self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism,” a “stable positive view of oneself, life, and future,” positivity is a “personal resource” that serves to help people in “recovering from a trauma, a loss, or a failure.” This personal resource translates into one that can become a social resource in interpersonal situations, mitigating against stress for the group as a whole.

The “Conservation of Resources" (COR; Hobfall, 2002) model that informs the Theodorou et al. study suggests that when one individual in a group has high positivity, the others become more positive as well. In other words, if things are going badly, a person who’s able to maintain a cheerful attitude will help the rest of the group bolster their inner resolve to get through those tough times.

Beyond becoming popular, then, a positive person can serve a vital role in helping to make everyone in the group stronger and ultimately more productive. The favorable effects on the group of having more resources to handle stress can then translate into greater positivity for the individuals who initially felt overwhelmed by the challenges facing them.

Testing the COR-Positivity Model

Because the COR-positivity model involves a set of group processes, the Italian author team decided to use a method of analysis known as the “Group Actor-Partner Independence Model (GAPIM)” which assumes that the data obtained from one member of a group will be connected to data from other group members. You can’t pull one person’s data out of the group context, according to this approach, because you need to study the group processes as a whole.

The measure of group outcome tapped perceptions by the group members of conflict among themselves. Higher levels of conflict should, by this reasoning, be related to lower productivity. This model could, however, also apply to the infinite number of interactions you experience outside the workplace, as conflict is almost a universal phenomenon in any collection of people.

Looking specifically at their hypotheses, the key prediction driving this study was that one positive worker could alleviate high intragroup conflict even when other people in the group are low in positivity. To test this prediction, the authors went into the field to examine small workgroups in two different industries: maintenance services and telecommunication. These workgroups averaged 10 members in size, and 71% of the groups were composed primarily of men. Their average age was 41 years old, and they had worked for their respective companies for an average of 8 years.

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To measure positivity, participants completed an 8-item scale in which they rated themselves on qualities such as “I’m satisfied with my life,” “I generally feel confident in myself,” and “at times the future is unclear to me” (reverse-coded). The scale measuring intragroup conflict included items such as “There is conflict about the work between my team members and me,” and “There is friction between the members of my team and me.” Try rating yourself on these items with respect to a group of which you are a part; the positivity rating scale is from 1 to 5 and the intragroup conflict scale is from 1 to 6.

The researchers took advantage of the GAPIM approach by constructing scores on average group positivity with respect to each individual actor. To do so, they calculated the average positivity score of the group without the rating of that particular individual.

Overall, participants scored at reasonably high levels of positivity, with the average for individuals at 4.63 on the 5-point scale. They also rated intragroup conflict levels as relatively low, with an average of 2.28 out of 6. Nevertheless, the authors were able to test their hypotheses by examining the patterns of relationships among the key measures using advanced correlational methods.

In the test of the key prediction of the study, the results showed that highly positive individuals perceived lower levels of conflict among the group even when the others in the group were low in positivity. However, on the flipside, when the group’s positivity was high, the individual’s own level of positivity had no effect on perceptions of conflict. This means that people high in positivity are less likely to perceive situations as stressful in general. However, even people low in positivity can feel better about the group’s interactions as long as the others in the group themselves seem to be looking at the bright side.

As you can see, these findings corroborate the COR model meaning that, in the words of Theodorou and her fellow researchers, “positive personal and social resources are strictly interdependent.” Thus, one positive person in a group can help bolster that group’s resources, lifting their ability to work through any stress they’re facing.

What to Do If You’re Not a Positive Person

The authors of the study suggest a number of practical implications of their findings. Again, although these findings apply to a work setting, they would appear to have more general applicability.

Groups can become more positive, the authors propose, through such methods as enhancing their overall morale, recalling positive events from the past, and helping to develop a more optimistic outlook toward the future. Your own positivity can be lifted, in line with the COR model, when that of your group is boosted as well.

Returning to the earlier example, that positive person in your own group might be someone you can learn from. Rather than fight the good vibes you get from that person, see if some of them can rub off on you. It’s also possible to address your own negativity by thinking specifically about your own feelings of life satisfaction and confidence in the future. Furthermore, if positivity reflects a sense of “self-efficacy,” as Theodorou et al. suggest, think about the times that you’ve handled stress well. Although you’re discouraged now, what were you able to accomplish the last time things seemed bleak?

To sum up, positivity is a quality you can nurture. Allowing others to build you up while you build your own self-confidence and sense of optimism can provide the resources you need to find fulfillment even in difficult times.