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Optimistic Mindset Linked To Poor Decision Making

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Friday, February 2, 2024 03:21
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Wednesday, January 31, 2024 11:05 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


So much for the Power of Positive Thinking!

Quote:

While a positive mindset is often associated with success, a new study suggests that optimism often leads to poor decision-making, especially when it comes to finances.


The study, conducted by the University of Bath in the UK and published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, sought to determine if people with an optimistic mindset had poorer decision-making cognition than people who were not optimistic. The researchers found that people with lower cognitive function tended to be more optimistic, which led them to make poor financial decisions.
Study Findings Explained

The study examined more than 36,000 individuals and found that people with realistic expectations and planning processes tend to make wiser decisions than people with a more optimistic mindset do.

Researchers discovered that people with the highest cognitive ability were 22 percent more likely to be realists (or pessimists) when it came to financial planning. They also had a 34.8 percent decrease in optimistic tendencies compared to people with lower cognitive ability. Cognitive ability was measured based on various cognitive skills, including verbal fluency, numerical reasoning, and memory. The results suggest that optimism bias causes people to expect unrealistically positive outcomes in life decisions, especially in regard to their finances.


MORE AT https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/optimistic-mindset-linked-to-poor
-decision-making-5572279


Yanno, every 10 years or so, somebody comes up with a "groundbreaking" study that positive thinking, self esteem, or optimism doesn't lead to more positive outcomes.

And then, it gets rolled over by the prevailing mantra that everyone must be upbeat ALL THE TIME.

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Thursday, February 1, 2024 9:48 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


I'm not convinced...

At least from the little blurb you quoted here, they're missing a very strong variable in that equation.

Chronically positive people are generally dumber people. In many cases, the dumber they are the happier they are.

If you remove overdosing on drugs from the data, the suicide rate is among an almost exclusive club of highly intelligent people.


This all makes sense. Even when things are going good in day to day life locally and worldwide, this planet is populated by over 8 billion people who are all in it for themselves at worst or themselves and their people at best. It's a harsh existence we live, and it only gets harsher as we age and things start falling apart on us. Intelligent people are aware of all of this and spend much of their days worrying about the future. For many of them, preparing for the future by doing things such as saving for a "rainy day" and having a decent nest egg are merely coping mechanisms that allow them to sleep better at night.

We're not a hive mind. Think of the ants and how much work they get done everyday without bitching about it. A little army of mindless drones marching back and forth and back and forth from the moment they're born until the moment they die. While I wouldn't consider them "happy", they don't seem to have any complaints. They are born with a purpose and they die fulfilling that purpose, and then another one is born to take over from there. They don't ever think about what they're doing. They don't need to, and even if they wanted to they don't have the capacity for individual thought.


Stupid humans, while not mindless drones like worker ants, have little ability to think beyond their tiny little day to day activities and a real inability to even contemplate possible futures let alone prepare for them. And we live in a society that protects and even rewards them for their bad behaviors. "You racked up an insane amount of debt that you can't even pay the interest on with your current job, did you? No problem. We'll take the debt away with a bankruptcy and the creditors will just raise their prices and/or rates for all the more responsible customers and you'll be fine."

Though I wouldn't argue that the study itself presents bad data at all, I think they may be missing the actual cause and they've jumped to the wrong conclusion.

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Thursday, February 1, 2024 10:01 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The case for pessimism: when negative thinking leads to positive outcomes

By Adam Grant | October 16, 2013

https://qz.com/135988/the-case-for-pessimism-when-negative-thinking-le
ads-to-positive-outcomes


In a series of clever studies, the psychologists Julie Norem and Nancy Cantor compared strategic optimists and defensive pessimists. If you’re a strategic optimist, you envision the best possible outcome and then eagerly plan to make it happen. If you’re a defensive pessimist, you start picturing all the things that could go wrong.

Most people assume that strategic optimists outperform defensive pessimists, because they benefit from confidence and high expectations. Norem and Cantor found that defensive pessimists were more anxious and set lower expectations for themselves in analytical, verbal, and creative tasks. Yet they didn’t perform any worse.

“At first, I asked how these people were able to do so well despite their pessimism,” Norem writes in The Positive Power of Negative Thinking. “Before long, I began to realize that they were doing so well because of their pessimism… negative thinking transformed anxiety into action.” By imagining the worst-case scenario, defensive pessimists motivate themselves to prepare more and try harder.

Strategic optimists and defensive pessimists succeed under different circumstances. If you’re a defensive pessimist, or you’re attempting to motivate one, the strategies that prove effective are often the reverse of what you expect.

Download The Positive Power of Negative Thinking for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Julie+Norem

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, February 1, 2024 10:24 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Now when you put the word "strategic" before "optimism" that does paint a different picture.

I still believe that defensive pessimism is the better route to go down in the long run. You never know when what you're currently taking for granted will go away, and it's better to always have your bases covered and have at least a minimal bank of reserves to draw from until you can get to the next opportunity without the train derailing.

That being said, if you are a defensive pessimist, it is a good idea to surround yourself with some optimists... strategic or otherwise.

There's a lot of good to be said about defensive pessimism, but it is possible to get yourself stuck on something that can put you in a negative feedback loop that is much easier to get out of if you've got an optimistic influence or two in your life to give you a hand.

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Thursday, February 1, 2024 10:09 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

That being said, if you are a defensive pessimist, it is a good idea to surround yourself with some optimists... strategic or otherwise.

There's a lot of good to be said about defensive pessimism, but it is possible to get yourself stuck on something that can put you in a negative feedback loop that is much easier to get out of if you've got an optimistic influence or two in your life to give you a hand.

Malcolm Reynolds is a strategic optimist. He has multiple interactions with the Operative, thinking he can talk his way out of any problem. The most ridiculous was the time when the Operative asked Mal if he was willing to die for what he believed in. Mal has a quip: "I am." He fires his gun but fails to kill the Operative, followed by another quip: "Of course, that ain't exactly Plan A..."

If Mal was a defensive pessimist, he would have paused, considered carefully his next move, and then killed the Operative, who had dropped his gun and was completely vulnerable to a Coup de Grâce from Mal. Mal couldn't imagine what a living, breathing Operative was capable of doing next, therefore the ever-optimistic Mal turned his back to the Operative. By imagining the worst-case scenario, defensive pessimists motivate themselves to prepare more and try harder and successfully kill the Operative.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, February 2, 2024 3:21 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Yeah. But then there wouldn't be the funny quip, and you wouldn't have been watching a Joss Whedon show.




I haven't given Firefly a rewatch in a very long time. I probably should.

But if I remember correctly, Mal seemed to surround himself with defensive pessimists.

I do think it's beneficial to have a mix of these personality types in your group. You've pointed out a situation where Mal's strategic optimism was problematic, but it's not as if everything that Mal said or did was bad for the crew. Quite the contrary. But in that situation almost anybody else on that ship would have handled that situation better.

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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