Positive Thinking? Is Negative Thinking More Normal?
According to an English study, summary published in Scientific American Mind,
British researchers showed that we are better at detecting words that carry negative meaning than those that are positive. Volunteers were exposed to a word for a fraction of a second—too short a time to consciously read the word—and then asked to guess whether the word was neutral or had emotional content (either positive or negative). The subjects were most accurate at detecting the negative words.
Here’s how it has been explained to me.
First thing we have to do it think about why we have language in the first place. Language developed, oh so many years ago, in order to do one main thing. It came about so that one person could say to the next …
“Duck!”; or
“Watch out!”; or
“Wait, let me pick those nits out of your hair.”
Yeah, language was our way of mimicking the beaver’s tail. It was an early warning system set up to protect us. Our genes’ main purpose has always been to perpetuate the old family name, so it was destined to find ways to keep itself alive. What better way to stay alive than to get a lot of other nervous systems involved in the process, making is a mutually desirable trait — to help keep others in our social circle alive.
Because of that, much of our language developed over there in the negative wing of the human house, probably the right wing.They’re usually pretty rigid, aren’t they, the party of “no” and all that.
This is part of the problem with the idea of things like keeping a “positive mental attitude.” It’s great if someone naturally sees the bright side of things, but trying to force a brain and nervous system to buy into the whole positive thinking thing is to go against the grain of human nature.
Why? Mainly, due to the model of language we have, the brain just won’t buy into positive thinking when it “knows” it is simply not true. That doesn’t mean we are lost. We are able to act in a positive way. We have the ability to work against our own brain’s knee jerk reactions.
Spike Lee said it well, “Do the right thing.”
He didn’t say, think positively and then do the right thing. You can have all the negative thoughts in the world and still choose to live well.
photo credit: mrwilleeumm
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