Get Real: Positive Psychology Is NOT Crippling America – Responding to "Bright-Sided"
We’ve been reading lots about the book coming out by Barbara Ehrenreich: Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. We were invited to respond to an article about Ehrenreich following her talk at the University of Pennsylvania. The original guest column is online, and included below, with text linked out to original sources where appropriate.
Comments? Questions? Leave a note in the comments section and let us know.
Guest Column | A personal trainer for your happiness
Learning and practicing optimism can literally brighten your future
By Andrew Rosenthal and Doug Hensch
Last week, The Daily Pennsylvanian asked “Does Positivity Cripple the U.S.?” after hearing Barbara Ehrenreich speak in College Hall about her new book, Bright-Sided: How The Relentless Promotion Of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. According to reports, her talk was an argument against positive thinking and smiles. Seriously.
Although we did not attend the talk or review a pre-released copy of the book, a few things about Ehrenreich are clear. According to the DP and The New York Times, she finds herself “infuriated” by teddy bears and frustrated by upbeat T-shirts. Positivity and optimism are “the strongest sources of negativity in our society” she claims — and optimism is “just too damn much work” to be a worthwhile pursuit. However, we resist the urge to dismiss Ehernreich outright as a grump.
Ehrenreich is critical of “bogus” and “false” and “unsullied” optimism. Fine. But such specific modifiers mean that there must be a “genuine,” “real” and “authentic” optimism out there — something imperfect but grounded in reality. In fact, realistic optimism is the bedrock of positive psychology — the scientific study of well-being. When carefully defined, optimism is about seeing opportunity in challenge, identifying the limitations of bad events and finding hope in the most dire of times. Optimism is what got Barack Obama elected.
In practice, what is the difference between optimism and pessimism? A pessimist examines a situation and can identify only the most dire possible outcomes. Case in point: Ask a good attorney to review a contract, and she will point out everything that might possibly harm you in its execution. Planning for the worst situation is a good thing when it comes to attorneys and airline pilots. But artists and authors and athletes flourish as optimists, when they take a chance and try to do better, and more, than their predecessors.
This isn’t just a matter of semantics — it’s science. Research started decades ago shows that Penn students who are optimists perform better in school and exhibit fewer signs of anxiety and depression than those who are pessimists. Today, every freshman in Wharton is required to complete the PennSTART program to learn how to enhance optimism skills through resilience training. In last week’s DP, columnist Maya Brandon called for PennSTART to become available to students in all schools.
In her talk, Ehrenreich reportedly railed against smiling. But research shows that people who exhibit genuine smiles in a high-school yearbook picture are less-likely to be divorced in their mid-50’s. And a happy physician reaches a faster, more accurate diagnosis of a difficult liver condition. Positivity levels were the difference between life and death for the Sisters of Notre Dame. Nuns who expressed the most positivity throughout life lived an average of 6.9 years longer than those who expressed the least.
But some of the most striking research shows that emotions of the heart, like hope and optimism are good … for the heart. Pessimistic men who suffered heart attacks were 86 percent more likely to die of another heart attack within 10 years. Only 33 percent of the most optimistic patients suffered the same fate. Put more bluntly, being a pessimist has the same effect on heart health as smoking about three packs of cigarettes a week. These findings are nothing to sneeze at — unless, of course, you’ve got a cold. If so, your roommate should hope he is an optimist — optimists have a significantly reduced chance of catching a cold, compared to pessimists.
Authentic happiness and realistic optimism have been rigorously studied around the world. Some of the best work comes from Penn’s own Martin Seligman, Ph.D., the Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology. Seligman and his colleagues have developed tests to let you measure your own optimism and happiness. The tests are available for free, at happier.com. Is your glass half empty, or half full?
happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.
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Andrew and Doug – I’m lucky that I’m a natural optimist. Howver I’m not sure if the sort of optimism taught by Seligman results in improved health – its never been tested.
Thanks for your comment Wayne. One significant impact with the optimism training (packaged as resilience training) that comes out of Penn has been to lessen the burden of symptoms of anxiety and depression upon populations trained in resilience, as compared to control groups. And of course, the burden of the depression itself is a major morbidity factor.
As you point out, there’s lots more testing to do. The field is relatively young, compared to studying the mechanisms of antibiotics, antidepressants or other medical interventions. I look forward to the ongoing research happening under the banner of “positive physical health” which we’ll start to hear about now that Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has funded 20 $250,000 grants for early-stage investigators. There’s lots of research to do. Some results will likely disprove current assumptions, while other results ought to better quantify and describe the benefits of optimism, resilience and positive psychology to physical health.
Andrew – I agree it reduces anxiety and depression in some cohorts – mainly female.
But it is big stretch to say that because it reduces anxiety and depression then it reduces health issues – again never been tested.
So we come back to the defence that it’s a new science. Great – but then you need to be careful when quoting the research.
A simple piece of reserach would be to take a pessimist, tecah them the ABC’s, expose them to a virus and see if the catch a cold. This would give credibility to your arguments. Until this researh happens your comments are merely conjecture.