MYTHS OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

MYTHS OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

“Think positively!”, “Improve your self-esteem!”, “Praise yourself more often!” - very often we meet these slogans in popular publications on psychology. But how correct are they? In one of the chapters of the book "Myths and Dead Ends of Pop Psychology" S. S. Stepanov examines 7 main myths of pop psychology of success

1. To succeed in achieving a goal, it must be visualized, that is, visualized as vividly as possible

Visualization - the creation in the imagination of images of the desired reality - is one of the most fashionable topics in pop psychology in recent years. Here, for example, is what the annotation to Paulina Wills' book “Visualization for Beginners” promises: “Visualization is a great creative power of the mind, the construction of an image“in the eye of the mind”with its subsequent realization in mental substance. The duration of the existence of such an image depends on the intensity and duration of the thinking of its creator. Intensive training allows you to translate the ideas of the mental world into the reality of the physical world. This book will teach you how to work with visualization. With the help of simple exercises, you can develop creativity, overcome ailments, make new friends, re-create your life in accordance with your positive fantasies and desires."

Reality

The first data on the effectiveness of visualization of anticipated results were obtained in the field of sports psychology and were later hastily disseminated to achievements in all areas. At the same time, it is overlooked that in the case of sports competitions we are talking about athletes who, during the entire course of long trainings, have achieved absolute automatism in performing the entire sequence of movements necessary to achieve a result; decisive for them is the intensity or accuracy of these movements. In these cases, visual anticipation of goal achievement does sometimes lead to improved athletic performance. In all other areas - especially career planning, building a general strategy for the life path - visualization not only does not bring the desired result, but can lead to the opposite.

UCLA professor Shayleigh Taylor warns: “First, visualization tends to separate the goal from the means needed to achieve it. Secondly, it prematurely provokes a joyful sense of success when you have not really achieved anything yet. And this distracts your strength from the goal. In other words, an imaginary image can act as a substitute for real success and thereby reduce your efforts, or even make you abandon them.

2. Restraining your feelings is wrong and harmful. Driven into the depths of the soul, they lead to emotional overstrain, fraught with breakdown. Therefore, any feelings, both positive and negative, must be openly expressed. If expressing your frustration or anger is unacceptable for moral reasons, they should be poured out on an inanimate object - for example, beating a pillow

About twenty years ago, the exotic experience of Japanese managers gained wide popularity. In the working locker rooms of some industrial enterprises, rubber dolls of the bosses, like punching bags, were installed, which workers were allowed to beat with bamboo sticks, ostensibly to defuse emotional tension and release the accumulated hostility towards bosses. Much time has passed since then, but nothing has been reported about the psychological effectiveness of this innovation. Nevertheless, numerous guides on emotional self-regulation still refer to it today, urging readers not so much to "control themselves" as, on the contrary, not to restrain their emotions.

Reality

According to Brad Bushman, professor at the University of the Piece. Iowa, the release of anger towards an inanimate object does not lead to stress mitigation, but quite the opposite. In his experiment, Bushman deliberately teased his students with offensive remarks as they completed a class assignment. Some of them were then asked to take out their anger on a punching bag. It turned out that the "tranquilizing" procedure did not bring the students into mental equilibrium at all - according to the data of the psychophysiological examination, they were much more irritated and aggressively disposed than those who had not received "relaxation".

And psychologist George Bonanno of Columbia University decided to correlate students' stress levels with their ability to control their emotions. He measured the stress levels of freshmen students and asked them to do an experiment in which they had to demonstrate different levels of emotion - exaggerated, understated, and normal.

A year and a half later, Bonanno again gathered subjects and measured their stress levels. It turned out that the students who experienced the least stress were the very students who, during the experiment, successfully amplified and suppressed emotions on command. In addition, as the scientist found out, these students were more adapted to attune to the state of the interlocutor.

3. If you are in a bad mood, you will feel better by switching your thoughts to something pleasant

“Close the doors of your consciousness before grief,” writes Napoleon Hill, one of the ideologues of success in life. - Use your mind for focused optimistic thinking. Don't let people and circumstances force unpleasant experiences on you.”

Reality

The results of psychological research show that when we are in a depressed mood - that is, exactly when we need a mood change - our mind is completely unable to intentionally implement it. When we are preoccupied with our problems, this means that they have taken possession of us completely - so much so that we lack the mental strength to suppress negative experiences. And trying to deceive ourselves, causing some new feelings, we only strengthen those that already possess us. “When you're under stress,” says a professor at the University of State. Virginia Daniel Wegner, “It's not just difficult to get yourself in a good mood with pleasant thoughts - it usually leads to the opposite effect.”

4. By reaching out to ourselves with encouragement and encouragement, and by praising ourselves, we can increase our self-esteem

Many popular self-help guides contain similar advice: do not get tired of encouraging yourself with praise, moreover, fill your home, car, workplace with mini-posters with approving slogans "Well done!" etc. When the gaze constantly dwells on such stimuli, it ostensibly improves mood and increases motivation.

Reality

Professor William Swann of the University of St. Texas discovered this pattern: self-approval can indeed slightly increase self-esteem, but only in those who already have it high enough. In addition, the benefits of this are highly questionable (see Myth 5). People with low self-esteem do not take various pseudo-positive slogans addressed to themselves seriously, because in principle they are not used to trusting their own positive judgments. Worse, in their undeserved praise, from their point of view, they hear a mocking connotation, and this does not at all raise the mood, rather the opposite.

5. Low self-esteem is a serious obstacle to success in life. Therefore, it must be increased in every possible way - both by means of self-persuasion, and with the help of all kinds of training procedures

Barnes & Noble's virtual bookstore offers customers over 3,000 different pop-psychological guides with the word "self-esteem" in the title. All of them, without exception, rely on the idea that losers are people who value themselves low. Accordingly, various techniques are proposed (by the way, not too diverse, in principle reduced to several banal attitudes), with the help of which self-esteem supposedly can and should be increased.

Reality

Many years ago, the outstanding American psychologist W. James developed a formula according to which a person's self-esteem can be represented as a fraction, the numerator of which is his real achievements, and the denominator is his ambitions and aspirations. In other words, the most reliable way to increase self-esteem (better than which no one has proposed over the past century) is, on the one hand, not to overestimate your claims, on the other, to achieve real, tangible success. If, figuratively speaking, put the cart in front of the horse, that is, cultivate high self-esteem in the absence of real success, and even against the background of overestimated ambitions, this is the path not so much to well-being, but in the opposite direction - to depression and neurosis.

James, who went down in the history of psychology more as a thinker than a researcher, only outlined many directions of subsequent psychological research with his judgments. Based on his ideas, 20th century psychologists conducted many interesting experiments and observations regarding self-awareness and self-esteem. And they found that a person's self-esteem begins to form at an early age, and mainly under the influence of external assessments, that is, those that are given to a person by the people around him (first, parents and educators, then comrades and colleagues). When these assessments are not based on real merit and dignity, high self-esteem, of course, can be formed, but in this case it has a neurotic character and often takes the form of arrogant narcissism and contempt (sometimes very aggressive) towards others. It is clear that such a position does not contribute to the establishment of relationships with people. Sooner or later, a person becomes an outcast. Can this be called a life success?

6. It is necessary to cultivate an optimistic attitude towards life, since pessimism hinders the achievement of success and plunges a person into the abyss of troubles

"Everything will be fine! All problems are solvable! Be optimistic and you are guaranteed success. Optimism is the key to success, prosperity, and invincible health. " Hope for the best and don't get discouraged is the theme in most guides today.

Reality

Recently, American psychologists gathered in Washington for a symposium under the slogan "The Unnoticed Merits of Negativism." This was the first rebellion against, as one of the symposium participants put it, "the tyranny of positive thinking and the dominance of optimism."

Modern psychologists conclude that the obsession with positivity and optimism has gone too far. Of course, optimism has its pluses, but there are many minuses as well. A one-sided view of the world and of oneself does not give a person a real picture of what is happening. Confessing it, a person willy-nilly lives only today, not thinking about the consequences of his own and others' actions. Carelessness and selfishness are the first fruits of thoughtless optimism, said the participants in the Washington symposium. An unforeseen collapse of hopes, severe disappointment are also the fruits of optimism. Every person in life also needs a share of pessimism, so as not to flatter himself too much and look at things soberly.

“Let's not forget that a glass can be not only half full, but also half empty,” says Julia Norem, a social psychologist in Massachusetts. She explores the so-called defensive pessimism - a strategy of behavior when a person seeks to mentally replay the upcoming situation, taking into account the small obstacles that he may face. Suppose he is preparing to speak in public. He needs to imagine what he will have to do if the microphone cord suddenly breaks, his notes fly to the floor, or he is suddenly attacked by a coughing fit. He should also remember about the mass of other little things that can negate even the most successful performance. Defensive pessimism is just as effective as strategic optimism, which forces a person to carefully avoid thinking bad things, and in some respects, pessimism has an even better effect. Reflections on interference will allow you to more fully embrace the subject, see all its sides, and thus awaken the imagination.

It is widely believed that a pessimistic view of things should be detrimental to health and that smiling is healthier than frowning. However, in practice, it turned out that this is not always true. The volunteers, selected at random, were asked to recall the most tragic events of their lives, reflect on them for several days, and then describe them in full detail in the form of short essays. What was surprising was not that the painful memories did not negatively affect the subjects' health indicators, but that they all felt better after that, and this feeling lasted for about four months after the completion of the experiment.

Psychologists also found that even nervous people, burdened with various worries and misfortunes, inclined to always complain about their fate, constantly complaining of pain in all parts of the body, visit the doctor no more often than their cheerful peers, and do not die before the optimists. In other words, even deep pessimism - not behavioral, not protective, not constructive, but deep and all-encompassing pessimism does not harm health at all.

7. The higher the motivation for success, the more likely it is to succeed

In everyday language, the stronger the desire to get something, the better it is. In line with this view, in our day countless "psychological" trainings are organized in order to maximize people's level of motivation. The "teachers of life" themselves often call themselves "motivators" so ingeniously, teaching: "Everyone gets everything he wants, and if he doesn't get it, then he doesn't want enough."

Reality

In 1908, the famous American psychologist R. Yerkes, together with J. D. Dodson set up a relatively simple experiment that demonstrated the dependence of the productivity of the performed activity on the level of motivation. The revealed regularity was called the Yerkes-Dodson law, it was experimentally confirmed many times and recognized as one of the few objective, indisputable psychological phenomena. Actually there are two laws. The essence of the first is as follows. As the intensity of motivation increases, the quality of activity changes along a bell-shaped curve: first it increases, then, after passing through the point of the highest indicators of success, it gradually decreases. The level of motivation at which the activity is performed as successfully as possible is called the optimum of motivation. According to the second law of Yerkes-Dodson, the more difficult the activity performed for the subject, the lower the level of motivation is optimal for it.

Stepanov S., "Myths and Dead Ends of Pop Psychology"