This seems to reiterate an argument I once read against positive affirmations (no longer recall the source). The idea is that every time you consciously make an affirmation, your subconscious corrects it, as in:<p>I am an outgoing person.
- <i>no, I'm not.</i><p>I am an outgoing person.
- <i>no, I'm not.</i><p>I am an outgoing person.
- <i>no, I'm not.</i><p>The subconscious wins, and what actually gets affirmed is that you're not an outgoing person. This article seems to suggest that this effect primarily occurs when the affirmation is sufficiently different from one's self image. (But do we generally need to affirm things we already believe?)
Worthwhile for the image and caption alone.<p>This reminds me: I'm a bit tired of quick reactionary articles in the news that come in response to relatively minor sociological, psychological, or medical studies. These new developments are indeed interesting, but they're often treated as factual rather than small nuggets of scientific exploration.<p>In this case, anyway, I'm glad that The Economist maintains a reasonable perspective, that this is a single limited study conducted by an individual as opposed to new, dazzling, irrefutable Facts.
Note that the affirmations practice doubted in the submitted article, based on "self-esteem," is distinct from the Three Good Things exercise developed by Martin E. P. Seligman.<p><a href="http://www.cabinetgirls.com/Three_Good_Things_Exercise.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.cabinetgirls.com/Three_Good_Things_Exercise.pdf</a><p><a href="http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/jen-hausmann/20070403191" rel="nofollow">http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/jen-hausmann/20070403...</a><p>Seligman has done considerable research on the development of "optimism," a distinct concept from self-esteem, and as former president of the American Psychological Association has done much to champion the "positive psychology" movement, a research-based look at how well-functioning individuals function well, and how all of us can learn to function better in the stress of daily life. Seligman would be the first to decry most school "self-esteem" programs--youth suicide rates went up rather than down during the decades when those were implemented--but he thinks there is a research base to show that improvement of optimism reduces depression and suicide and builds problem-solving ability.
Conclusion from the article:<p>"Dr Wood suggests that positive self-statements cause negative moods in people with low self-esteem because they conflict with those people’s views of themselves. When positive self-statements strongly conflict with self-perception, she argues, there is not mere resistance but a reinforcing of self-perception. People who view themselves as unlovable find saying that they are so unbelievable that it strengthens their own negative view rather than reversing it. Given that many readers of self-help books that encourage positive self-statements are likely to suffer from low self-esteem, they may be worse than useless."
I find to avoid the negative reaction, you can use "becoming". Instead of saying
"I'm a lovable person"
use
"I'm becoming a lovable person"<p>And also instead of using adjectives, use something that goes for identity, instead of,
"I'm becoming charming"
use
"I'm becoming a charmer"
The only valid conclusion to be drawn out of this 'study' is that push polling works. If you get people to affirm a view and then you ask then a logically related question they are likely to bend the answer to be logically consistent with the first statement. For them to go on and try correlate these results with a 'past study' stretches things beyond dubious.
This is an interesting data point, however one key factor in repeating positive affirmations is the repetition.<p>I'm not sure you can discredit the idea with a one-time test like this. It's kind of like getting a bunch of people to do push-ups once, and trying to draw some conclusion about strength training.
Perhaps choosing affirmations that are believable in terms of the specific person's self image would show mood increases. e.g.<p><i>I'm not all bad and if I could find love once, there's a real chance I can find it again.</i>
Wasn't it Freud who proposed that depressed people are actually quite perceptive: they simply realize how bad things are for them?<p>This seems to be in the same vein. If you have low self-esteem, you know you suck, and no amount of telling yourself otherwise is going to change that.<p>I believe the theory of cognitive therapy relies on repeated instances of self-reinforcement, not just saying happy thoughts when somebody rings a bell.<p>What is it with psych studies and bell-ringing, anyway? Get a buzzer or a blinking light or something already.
It is old as a dirt - "People see what they want to see" - but reality is always different and it destroys delusions and brings pain.<p>The "solution" also comes from begining of the time - "be selfless", just do one thing at a time (leave anything else, including self-estim aside for this period of time) and do it well, or "just do it".