‘When life hands you lemons, make lemonade ...’¹ famously advised Norman Vincent Peale, a Reformed Church minister and founding father of the Positive Thinking movement. If you ever needed a demonstration of the power of positive thinking, then the way the ideology of ‘accentuating the positive’ has infiltrated every level of Western culture since the 1950s might well clinch the argument.

Of course the policy of always insisting on a glass half full has also had its detractors. Writer and journalist Barbara Ehrenreich is the latest champion in a valiant tradition of hardcore dissenters and her acerbic commentary Smile or Die is well worth a read. However, it is fair to say that such conscientious objectors are very much in the minority. Increasingly they cut Canute-like figures railing against an unstoppable cultural tide. Most of us now take it for granted that a positive mental attitude is very much an asset in life and should be nurtured whenever possible.

Positive thinking can now be found in a myriad of forms, ranging from confidence-building affirmations to visualisations for combating illness or losing weight, but here I want to focus on the least fanciful tip of the iceberg: the idea that a positive mental attitude is the key to generally getting on in life, as well as providing a reliable foundation for your mental health.

While Peale’s legacy has left a great deal of blatant quackery in its wake, the rise of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has given positive thinking a new gloss of scientific respectability. Of course, CBT has tended to avoid phrases like ‘positive thinking’ (probably precisely because of their somewhat dubious heritage), but certainly makes no bones about the destructive impact of ‘negative’ thoughts upon people’s mood and state of mind. And of course you don’t need to be a rocket scientist, or even a psychologist, to appreciate how a more positive attitude can lift your mood or have beneficial knock-on effects upon your behaviour.

Professor Martin Seligman, who is interested in what helps some people cope better than others, has done a great deal of methodical research demonstrating how important an optimistic explanatory style may be in warding off depression. He notes that depressed people tend to blame themselves for their misfortunes rather than find mitigating circumstances as their more optimistic counterparts tend to do. They tend to see setbacks as permanent rather than temporary and generalise from specific incidents to reach bleak conclusions about themselves and their lot in life. If negative thinking predisposes you to some forms of mental illness, then surely it stands to reason that positive thinking has to be the most appropriate antidote, doesn’t it?

Well, Canadian researchers Joanne Wood, John Lee and Elaine Perunovic wouldn’t necessarily agree. They found that while repeating positive affirmations (e.g. ‘I am a lovable person’) can provide an emotional boost for some people, if you suffer from low self-esteem then these affirmations can actually make you feel worse, not better. The reason for this appears to be that for someone who feels truly wretched, parroting positive sentiments opens up a credibility gap so wide that it cannot be bridged. Instead of using such affirmations as stepping-stones to a more upbeat reality, depressed people just become more painfully conscious of the discrepancy between where they find themselves and where they would like to be. One individual, after attempting to cure himself of depression using positive self-affirmations, described how they merely became ‘slogans of self-loathing’.

Similarly, independent studies have shown that while for non-depressed people positive affirmations do appear to dampen down levels of responsiveness in the amygdala (effectively the ‘fear centre’ of the brain), for depressed people the opposite effect is produced: the amygdala becomes more rather than less active while the affirmations are being rehearsed.

This is not the only context in which positive thinking can be counter-productive. It would also appear that sometimes people who are especially good at visualising their preferred future (as self-help books often encourage you to do) may unwittingly trigger a relaxation response usually only activated once goals have been successfully achieved. Perversely, this could make it harder for people who successfully picture their desired future to marshal the energy, focus or discipline they may require to make it a reality. The poet and novelist Anatole France once pointed out that ‘To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act’, but of course the opposite is equally true. Dreaming without action doesn’t usually accomplish too much.

Not only can too much positive thinking rob you of your motivation to act, but it can also handicap you psychologically in other ways. Joseph Forgas, a professor of social psychology, reports that ‘Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world’. Positive thinking, just as surely as negative thinking, can blinker us to important aspects of reality. Barbara Ehrenreich believes that the blind optimism that positive thinking fosters induced the kind of recklessness that ran rife on the trading floors in the 80s and 90s and helped drag the world towards global financial meltdown.

In 2011, Bettina von Helverson and colleagues conducted a research study that indicates depressed people are also better at sequential decision-making. She reported that ‘... depressed participants accepted options less readily, which led to longer search and better choices’ and concluded that ‘[t]hese results suggest that depression, by fostering greater persistence, may improve performance in certain tasks.’ Maybe cloud nine isn’t always the best place to sit when you’re at work? Ronda Muir, who runs a consultancy firm to the legal profession, speculates that an intuitive grasp of this principle may explain why generations of Swiss watchmakers have traditionally piped downbeat music into their workshops in order to hone their concentration and accuracy.

In fact, the assumption that positive feelings are incompatible with stress and depression may also reflect a peculiarly Western take on happiness. Research conducted at the University of Seattle found that while a lack of positive emotions coincided with stress and depression symptoms in European Americans, amongst immigrant Asian participants no such association could be detected. Commentators trying to make sense of these findings believe the most likely explanation is that in Asian cultures suffering is regarded as a precondition of growth. Consequently a perpetually positive person might also be thought of as spiritually weak or immature. Within Eastern cultures both positive and negative feelings are to be accepted on the basis that everything is in constant flux. Received wisdom is that all feelings, whether positive or negative, will ultimately pass and both must therefore be accommodated. The idea of trying to replace one type of feeling with another is quite alien to the Eastern mind.

So how do you tell if a thought is positive or not? The simple rule of thumb here in the Western hemisphere is that a positive thought is one that makes us feel good, while a negative one makes us feel bad. At least that is often what CBT seems to be telling us. The trouble is that what makes us ‘feel good’ is not necessarily good for us. The ‘feel-good factor’ can prove a pretty flaky criteria for deciding on the value of many things, especially what we choose to fill our minds with. By this kind of reckoning heroin could be seen as a very ‘positive’ drug, but that doesn’t mean I want to start taking it.

Nobody feels positive all of the time ...

A commitment to unrelenting positivity can not only make us quite irritating to be with, it can also make us rather selfish and narrow-minded. If I repeatedly tell myself that I should be striving to feel good at all times and avoiding or disavowing any thought pattern that makes me uncomfortable or sad, I inevitably have to focus on a fairly narrow repertoire of thoughts and beliefs. Sooner or later I will also need to start disconnecting myself from other people and their concerns. Too much empathy becomes a threat to my ability to maintain my positive state of mind which is, after all, the main priority. Not only do I need to focus exclusively on thoughts that keep me feeing good, but I have a duty to insulate myself against other people’s pain and negativity.

The latent dangers of unbridled positivity are nicely illustrated by the resonance between aspects of a positive mental attitude as commended to us by the self-help industry and the thought patterns characteristic of hardened criminals. I don’t want to overplay this, but it is interesting that criminologists agree that one of the dominant features of the criminal mindset is a pervasive sense of entitlement. As Yochelson and Samenow explain: ‘The main cognitive distortion leading to offending is thought by some to be the over-valuing of self-centred attitudes and thoughts that entitle an offender to behave in a deviant manner’. Of course, much positive-thinking teaching deliberately encourages us to think in terms of our rights and dues and exhorts us to ‘name it and claim it’. Most positive affirmations are about the self: I challenge you to find one that focuses on the needs or rights of others.

The Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) contains eight sub-scales designed to pick up thought patterns commonly found in repeat offenders. One of these addresses the tendency of criminals to cut off or dissociate from feelings of fear and anxiety when they arise. Positive thinking, with its emphasis on superimposing positive emotions over negative ones is, at one level, a technology for silencing unwanted or distressing emotions, often by denying their very existence.

Offenders are also distinguished by what PICTS describes as their ‘Power Orientation’ or the need to maintain absolute control over other people and their immediate environment. The most extreme version of positive thinking presented in ‘mind over matter’ books like Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret is of course the ultimate fantasy of control. The authors promise that the very fabric of reality can be refashioned any way you like. Positive thinking pursued to extremes allows for no detractors, not even, it would appear, the laws of physics.

Aspects of positive thinking could also readily be mistaken for the ‘Super-optimism’ displayed by criminals. In their case this is usually manifest in an unrealistic confidence in their chances of ‘getting away with it’, but positive thinking can also generate unwarranted confidence in desired outcomes, regardless of any obstacles that may lie in the way. ‘Super-optimism’ is also closely related to another PICTS sub-scale, namely ‘Cognitive Indolence’. This refers to a generally uncritical attitude to one’s thoughts, plans and ideas accompanied by impoverished problem-solving skills. As we have seen, positive thinking, affirmation and visualisation can circumvent the need for more prosaic but effective strategies for achieving your goals. If you can simply dial up a pizza, why trouble yourself with making a shopping list buying the ingredients, kneading the dough and working out the cooking time yourself? On the other hand, ringing a pizza delivery store does actually work ...

I am not arguing that positive thinking fosters criminality. But I do think we should be careful about abandoning ourselves wholesale to Vincent Peale’s philosophy. Optimistic, life-affirming people can be great company, but like many effective remedies, positive thinking can produce some pretty undesirable side-effects when taken to excess. Denial is never good for the soul, and we need the information provided by the full spectrum of our feelings – not just the more upbeat ones. If we want to live as grown ups then we have to risk confronting reality head-on, however daunting, confusing or disappointing that may prove at times, and not become shallow fantasists who just stick our heads in the sand and insist that things are the way we want them to be. Right up to the end, passengers aboard the Titanic in 1912 clung stubbornly to the belief that the ship was ‘unsinkable’. It still went down.

As you can probably tell, I’m nervous about our headlong rush to embrace the positive. Is it so far-fetched to imagine a future in which those who prefer to encounter reality in the raw ultimately become marginalised or even persecuted? Where ‘negative’ thinking becomes the new Thought Crime? Call me paranoid, but then I do live in a country where the government is about to conduct a census to check if I’m happy enough.

Let’s face it: negative thinking is draining and depressing. No one needs an Eeyore in their life, let alone to become one. However, in my opinion, people who always look on the bright side can be pretty annoying too. More often than not they seem – how can I put this politely? – a little bit unbalanced. I invite you to join me in making a brave stand for the middle ground. It may not be particularly glamorous and the terrain can be a little boggy at times, however, ultimately it’s also far less likely to give way underneath you.

¹ Or as some wag once said: ‘When life hands you melons, it’s probably also handed you dyslexia ...’