Good news
As it happens, there’s good news in The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It (2019). In at least one chapter, “The Pollyanna Principle,” the authors say that while negativity is something we are more prone to focus on, we generally spend a lot more time with the positive.
The Baumeister/Tierney book above (mentioned in this space a few times now) tells us about psychology and social psychology, about tendencies that are part of the generalized human experience. Tendencies can apply to us individually more or less, to varying degrees depending on our age, temperament, life experiences, and so on. Maybe depending on our genetics and neurochemistry, for which the science makes a strong case.
Regarding the positive, researchers studied language to see if they could detect other factors involved in our inclination to positivity or negativity. They found contradictions. Languages have more words for negative emotions—fear, anger, sadness—than for positive ones—happiness, elation, joy. On the other hand, computer analysis of books, newspapers, social media content, and so on showed that positive words were far more common than negative ones in actual everyday usage.
Baumeister and Tierney suggest several reasons for the countervailing positivity bias in everyday social interactions. A prominent one is that we prefer to engage with people we think of as positive than with those who are perpetually sad or angry. Knowing this, we try to put on a happy face in social interactions. That’s even more bad news for anyone experiencing depression, especially if it derives from loneliness. It’s the spiraling nature of depression: the overwhelming sense of sadness often fuels and worsens itself.
As an academic matter, the field of psychology has been built overwhelmingly on negativity, on mental illness rather than mental health. Baumeister, as the researcher in the pair, says that the research has begun to evolve away from the focus only on negative affect, trying instead to explain how healthy and happy people function. But the bulk of the science is negative because pathology is what the research has analyzed the longest and closest.
I’m sure readers are aware of how unhappy lottery winners supposedly are after their wins, for example—we’ve all read the reporting. Much of this conventional belief came from slipshod journalism of rather superficial research—research that wasn’t even trying to determine lotto winners’ happiness. More careful subsequent study actually found that lottery winners weren’t as thrilled a year after they won than on the day they won, but that they were generally happier afterwards. One certainly would expect the initial elation to subside over time, but that doesn’t mean the winners turned to emotional misery.
Not even bad news itself necessarily means unhappiness. In fact, for all the typical media and popular culture handwringing over post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD—a serious ailment), a more common phenomenon is post-traumatic growth, by a roughly estimated ratio of four to one. As much as half the population is estimated to have experienced some severe emotional past trauma, but far more of us are resilient because of the experience soon after the initial shock passes. We are hurt and distressed early on, but once we’ve gone past that, most of us overcome the traumatic experiences, learning positive lessons from them.
There is also the encouraging effect of time and nostalgia on most of us. We tend to be less worried and less negative as we age, with the peaks (depths?) of unhappiness on average coming in at approximately age 50. As the subsequent decades pass, we get less self-conscious about ourselves, less worried about our life ambitions.
Finally, when it comes to nearer-term memories, sports fans tend to recall their teams’ winning seasons more readily than the unhappy ones—in much greater detail. Gamblers, rather to their own detriment, tend to recall their wins more easily than their losses. And they recall their near-wins (which is to say: actual losses) as wins, validating their own gambling techniques and strategies. The tendency for some to focus on the positive contributes to their gambling addictions.
Ok, I am assuming you can't block anyone on the mother ship...so, I can't reply to the guy I was talking to...so, he must have left or something
Now, I feel bad, I keep trying to tell him I don't think all conservatives are bad, but, some are, and they are primarily the far right ones ...
He thinks I think that and on top of that he thinks because I know that some conservatives are trying ( and some succeeding like DeSantis, which I made clear that was who I was talking about) to hurt libs one way or another, that means I think they all are the same and they are not.
Plus, he thinks he think this because I hang out on left wing media...sigh...I tried explaining, would I be on The Dispatch or even The Bulwark if that is where I get all my information...I am a swing voter...I voted for Romney and McCain for Pete's sake...I couldn't tell him that that isn't where I get my views at all...because there is no reply
And I honestly want to know what he thinks of Fox and what they did and are doing....how does he not get that they have a bad motive and they are trying to hurt libs?
Ok, someone slap me upside the head....sigh...I knew from reading Anne's post that the TMD comment section was bad this morning...and I had to go read some and respond...sigh
Apparently, I think DeSantis is pandering because he is a conservative...sigh
And I must be one of those tribal evil libs...
Gah, I may have to just stop reading any of it soon