Warning: This will not be the most ebullient post you will read this week. But you will find it useful to your well-being. There are three types of people in this world. The people who see the glass half-full, people who see the glass half empty, and the college generation who prefers to pour the water out and fill the glass with beer. I'm speaking directly to those people out there known as the "glass half-empiters", and I'm here to tell you that you aren't entirely wrong.
I can't help but stumble upon viral pictures with brightly colored backgrounds and tacked with an inspirational quote about positivity. Lately, it seems there has been an overwhelming amount of push for people to remain positive on a daily basis. What these "sunny side of life" folks overlook is that the world needs realists.
Terrorism. Climate change. The refugee crisis. Gun violence. Social injustice. And Donald Trump on the cusps of GOP nomination. The list goes on and on. There's a lot to be unhappy about these days. So, why should we expend so much energy to keep afloat in the sea of positivity?
Social psychologist Dr. Alison Ledgerwood of USC Davis conducted an experiment in 2008 to test effects on people trying switch their cognitive frame of thinking from negative into positive and vise versa. The experiment randomly assigned participants into two groups, and they were given a description of a surgical procedure. Group 1 was told that the surgery had a 70% success rate. Group 2 was told about the procedure in terms of losses, a 30% failure rate. Not surprisingly, people like the procedure when it's described as a 70% success and don't like it when it is described as 30% failure rate. Here's the twist. Experimenters told Group 1 to now view the procedure as a 30% failure rate. Participants changed their mind. They now view the procedure as undesirable. Group 2 was told that they can think of the procedure as a 70% success rate, but Group 2 stuck with their initial opinion. They seemed to be "stuck" in a negative frame of thinking. A series of later experiments corroborated human's innate tendency to adopt and keep the negative frame of mind.
Even evolutionary psychologists agree that it's part of our human history. Our brains are designed to scan the environment around us to detect danger and search for problems to solve. Negative thinking is just as natural as bipedalism and growth of the frontal lobe. The point being that we all encounter negative thoughts and we may be wasting our time to try to defuse them.
This raises the next question, can negative thinking actually be positive? Here is your chance to smile, glass half-emptiers, the answer is yes.
In times of unrest it pays to be a negative thinker. No great change has ever come from a group of people in complete bliss and pretend states of euphoria. Inspiring revolutions and great historical change came from those who were unhappy with the current infringement of the people. What good arises out of British tyranny, civil war, racial segregation, and women's lack of basic rights? Just ask some of our greatest leaders. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King Jr. said to hell with seeing seeing the glass half full, and dedicated their lives to what we know as the abolishment of slavery, equality under the constitution, our very own independent country.
As anticipation of the back lash of criticism, I am no stranger to the benefits of the power of positivity. Like most of life aspects, I believe it's a balance game. I am not suggesting pessimism, insecurity and exaggerated gloominess. I am suggesting that it is perfectly okay to experience negative thoughts. After all, what makes us human is our ability to feel emotion very deeply. We're allowed to occasionally be upset, outraged and fed up. To exhaust mental effort towards the opposite is to deny how we feel.
I am suggesting that we knock it off with the extreme expectation that every day is perfect and that everything in life is a positive, blissful experience. I want people to see a picture of a starving child and believe that shudder at the sheer emotion it evokes. Instead, as a society we hold on to the hope that what is through the looking glass is better than what we see in the mirror. And I'm positively annoyed with that.
Please excuse me, as I need to go fill my glass again.
