Re: Positive psychology and emotional management in the USA

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Joanna asks why the US left has so many negative emotions. We're in a vicious circle. Real-world failures -- including such events as the conquest of the old USSR by the US -- encourage a gloomy atitude. This encourages limited thinking (as below). This encourages an intensification of the gloom-and-doom attitude, since limited thinking encourages further failure.
 
In the late 1960s/early 1970s, we saw the reverse. Possibilities were opened up -- by millions marching in the street -- which encouraged "optimism of the will," which encouraged people to think big, which sometimes led to further successes.
 
The problem with this bipolar (depression/manic) sociological process is that sometimes both circles go too far. In the 1960s, there was all sorts of puerile talk of "revolution now" and such nonsense as the Weather Underground and the SLA. In the current era, we see the flip-side of shrinkage and depresion.
 
Maybe what the left needs is the sociological equivalent of Depakote, a mood-stabilizer, or Prozac...
 
Jim

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Jurriaan Bendien [mailto:bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
	Sent: Fri 10/3/2003 9:09 PM 
	To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
	Cc: 
	Subject: [PEN-L] Positive psychology and emotional management in the USA
	
	

	"Positive emotions don't necessarily narrow people toward a specific action,
	like negative emotions do. Positive emotions seem to broaden people's
	repertoires of things they like to pursue. They broaden ways of thinking
	beyond our regular baseline, and they accumulate. And that broadening allows
	people to discover and learn new things. (...) When we are given permission
	to focus on emotions, a new dimension of the human landscape just pops out.
	If you pay attention to and track emotions, especially positive emotions, I
	think that you capture a lot more information that will help you make
	decisions."
	
	- Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D, research psychologist, University of Michigan
	
	Source: http://gmj.gallup.com/content/default.asp?ci=1177