Positive vs. Negative Thinking.

Labels are rather constricting, but thinking positively or negatively to a bad situation may go beyond just labeling someone a pessimist or optimist. A study conducted by Michigan State University suggest that such paradigms or outlooks may be a result of a innate condition that is hardwired into you brain.

"The ability to stay positive when times get tough -- and, conversely, of being negative -- may be hardwired in the brain, finds new research led by a Michigan State University psychologist.The study, which appears in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, is the first to provide biological evidence validating the idea that there are, in fact, positive and negative people in the world."

So would it be appropriate to continue to use labels like pessimist or optimist for these people? Well for the pessimist or negative thinkers, that label could remain steady based on the results.

"The participants were surveyed beforehand to establish who tended to think positively and who thought negatively or worried. Sure enough, the brain reading of the positive thinkers was much less active than that of the worriers during the experiment."
"The worriers actually showed a paradoxical backfiring effect in their brains when asked to decrease their negative emotions," Moser said. "This suggests they have a really hard time putting a positive spin on difficult situations and actually make their negative emotions worse even when they are asked to think positively."

So what about "helping" the negative thinker shift themselves to think more positively?

"Moser said the findings have implications in the way negative thinkers approach difficult situations.
"You can't just tell your friend to think positively or to not worry -- that's probably not going to help them," he said. "So you need to take another tack and perhaps ask them to think about the problem in a different way, to use different strategies."
Negative thinkers could also practice thinking positively, although Moser suspects it would take a lot of time and effort to even start to make a difference."

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The above story is based on http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2014/positive-negative-thinkers-brains-revealed/ provided by Michigan State University

Journal Reference:
Jason S. Moser, Rachel Hartwig, Tim P. Moran, Alexander A. Jendrusina, Ethan Kross. Neural markers of positive reappraisal and their associations with trait reappraisal and worry.. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2014; 123 (1): 91 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0035817

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140402100052.htm

 

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I try , at times, to try to be more lighthearted whenever I come across a negative thinking person or I'll just not bother to communicate with them. One thing I don't do is try to make them a positive thinker for I really don't have the time to give them to do that therapy.

 

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I wouldn't necessarily conflate negative thoughts with worrying, at least in this sense: many times it's essential to worry about a situation that can have a negative outcome, because that concentrates the mind and forces you to look for a solution with a positive outcome. It's a way to promote problem solving. At least that's how it works for me; I'm by nature an optimistic person who worries quite a lot.

 

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I try to think ahead , to be ready for problems that might arise.

 

Almost anyone can observe a situation for a time and identify the challenges. Complaining about circumstances is an easy habit to fall into and only perpetuates the negative aspects.

The more creative and positive personalities refrain from reiteration of the negative and instead seek and work toward even small improvements of the situation. Even with a recurring challenge, there are often steps that one can take to be prepared and better deal with the problem.

I am not convinced that a person's way of thinking is hardwired into the brain but I have certainly observed cases where experience has influence. I am of the opinion that many (not all) people are capable of learning new patterns of thought which will result in outcomes that are positively reinforcing. As people learn the difference in these ways of thinking and their outcomes, it becomes a conscious choice to seek the path that renders more positive feedback.

I make this statement because I used to be a much less optimistic person. If I can learn new skills, I would extrapolate that others may also.

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So love is hard wired in our minds as a feeling like satisfaction and happiness! Do you think or imagine Love existing out there beyond the cosmos?

 

That's interesting, i practice the same behavior when i encounter an optimist, i don't try to make them "negative" thinkers per say, but i just to try to show them the reality that is lost to them when they look at the world in rose colored glasses...they'll call me a heartless pessimist afterwards though..which is semi-right of them to do so. For me pessimism and realism are kissing cousins.

 

No.

 

I find that the pessimist is more often correct in his predictions.

 

For me it is often better to approach a bad situation with positive aspects in any areas in life. As it has been said, things will be much lighter to handle no matter how difficult it is when a person is optimistic.

 

If you think about pessimism, it has a connection to fear and fight or flight. One will avoid situations or fight against situations, like a critic. Optimism is not about fear, but is about desire. For example, if an unexplored path is encountered by a group of optimists and pessimists, the pessimist will see obstacles and threats due to projected fear; "it will not turn out well." The optimist will do the opposite and see positive possibilities, going down the path. He is like the guy going out on a date, feeling desire, dreaming of the best outcome. The pessimists tend to remain in the box of what is known, out of fear, while the optimists tends to wander outside the box due to desire. This is less reliable, but it periodically expands the box so the pessimists can spread out somewhat.

If you look deeper into this, since these two states of mind appear to be innate in many people, this implies an unconscious connection. The most likely source is the binary nature of law of good and evil. Each law memory has two emotional valances, one for the good side of law; paradise, acceptance and security, and one for the bad side of law; hell, pain and suffering. The result is each law, although a single thing on paper, is stored in two places in the brain because of two emotional tags, one for each side of each law. In paradise, there is no threat just positive outcomes that all turn out well. In hell there is nothing but threat and negative outcomes. This can cloud the entire mind.

If there were no law, and therefore no emotional polarization, then reality would be neutral and subject to real time analysis like an animal. One could accept the practicality of the box, since it contains the best knowledge, but also realize the box is not at steady state and can be expanded. Law adds emotions to this with people in culture becoming polarized internally and externally into pessimist and optimists.

Note: The hippocampus adds tags to memory, when memory is written to the cerebral matter. These tags allow a wide range of similar memories to become animated, at the same time, by simply adjusting the emotional potential. For example, when we get hungry the memories that appear will have an association to hunger (food items) and not just a bunch of random memory. When animals are in heat during breeding season, their memory becomes narrowed to just the needs of mating; similar tags.

The tagging allows similar memory to be stored in specific layers. When one layer appears, such as hunger, we can use the entire brain, but in conjunction with the layer needed by a particular firmware/valance. Law uses two layers, with the good and bad side of the law each inn its own layer. The optimist and pessimist use one of the other of these two layers to gauge itself to the unknown, based on conventions and consequences of law.

To get a pessimist to become an optimist, it require being able to shift the unconscious layer, which may not be easy. More often, one tries to use reason but if the unconscious layer is active, at the same time (two centers of consciousness) they can neutralize each other.

 

I'll say it depends on the hardwiring in the brain, genetics in general, and circumstances of one's life. For example, how a person's memory works is a big factor. I think it's a big reason why Alzheimer's patients tend toward depression.

Genetics and circumstances can predispose people to a lot of failures in life, which tends to make them pessimists. I just read that most breast cancer survivors remain unemployed after four years of recovery.

It's probably a lot more common for someone to begin life as an optimist and become a pessimist than the other way around.

 

"I'm not a pessimist, I'm just an optimist with experience." I completely agree, as for me..i just cannot find myself looking through rose colored glasses at anything. I can see potential sure, but way more often than not, i see all the various factors that will drag down or destroy that potential come into fruition and crush the hope with it. Hope is a curious little thing, it is the essential human delusion, the source of our greatest strength and our greatest weakness.

 

Imagine there's a sender, and our mind is the receiver of emotions, and feelings.

 

You did the right thing. I once tried to argue a friend who seemingly was like that out of his religious belief, and he later took his life. Afterward, I cried the hardest I can remember ever crying as an adult. It was the biggest mistake I ever made.

 

A: What or who is the sender?

B: Why would said aforementioned "sender" send a single or better yet any form of stimuli to elicit the neurological -chemical and electrical responses that are interpreted as "emotions" to me, a single insignificant bipedal ape, out of 7 billion other bipedal apes, who all reside on a blue speck in the middle of a vast universe?

C: Do you really see any signs that the Universe displays or even is capable of displaying discernible behaviors that can be measured as behavior of a sentient being, on par with or above human intelligence, let alone display love?

 

Conscious Love and company.

 

Accuracy of perception and estimation correlates well with mild depression - mildly depressed people are better at estimating how long a journey or physical task will take, how much something weighs or how big it is, the likelihood of winning or losing a poker hand, how much they can save from their wages each month, their relative score on a recently taken math test, that kind of thing.

Which came first, the accuracy or the depression, I haven't found any evidence for - my guess is mutual feedback. But the circumstance argues against trying to get anyone to think positively about some matter that seems to be depressing them - thinking is what mildly depressed people are doing too much and too well already.

Go get drunk, join the circus, join the army, "Don't try to get over a man, just get under another one", "Gee that's too bad - hey, can you give me a hand with this?"

People who pride themselves on accuracy and physical perception often seem to cultivate a mildly depressed, unreactive approach - machinists and mechanics and dentists and auditors don't do much hollering and high-fiving. This may be learned behavior, or a gravitating toward a niche, or both.

Clinical or incapacitating depression is a different issue.