Stop Being So Positive
- Gabriele Oettingen
- October 27, 2014
- Harvard Business Review
We’ve all
heard a great deal about the power of positive thinking. Organizations
encourage it among their employees in an effort to boost performance
and engagement, and it’s a key tenet of “managing yourself” well; affirmative
messages about perseverance, resilience, and vision adorn many an office wall.
In the wake of the Great Recession, some businesses even hired happiness
coaches to get their workers looking on the bright side. And an
optimistic attitude is expected of leaders; politicians and corporate
executives should always have that “think it-do it” spirit on display.
There’s just
one problem, however. Research my colleagues and I have performed over the past
two decades suggests that positive thinking doesn’t actually help us as much as
we suppose. In fact, examining the effects of positive visions of the future on
people pursuing various kinds of wishes — from health-related, such as losing
weight, quitting smoking, or recovering quickly from surgery, to the
improvement of professional or academic performance (for example, mid-level
managers wishing to reduce job-related stress, graduate students looking for a
job, or school children seeking to get good grades) — we’ve consistently found
that people who positively fantasize make either the same or less progress in
achieving attainable wishes than those who don’t.
This makes
perfect sense, if you think about it. Dreaming about a successful outcome in
the future is pleasurable, leaving you with a nice, warm feeling of
satisfaction. But in a workplace setting, that’s counterproductive. You’re
less motivated to buck up and make the strong, persistent effort that is
usually required to realize challenging but feasible wishes. In some of our studies, we found that positive
thinking produced measurably lower systolic blood pressure — a key measure of
how energized someone is. In others, positive thinkers were as likely as
participants in a control group to take easy steps toward a goal, but
significantly less likely to take more cumbersome and difficult steps, such as
donating meaningful amounts of their time or money.
“Okay,” you
might say, “Forget positive thinking. I’m going to dwell on all the daunting
challenges I face in my job.” But, unfortunately, dwelling on reality doesn’t
help much either.
What does
help is mental contrasting, an exercise that brings together our positive
fantasy about the future with a visualization of the obstacle standing in the
way. Even more beneficial is adding if-then planning that allows you to address
the obstacle when it arises.
In our
research, we’ve developed a mental contrasting tool called WOOP —
Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. Here’s how it works: Find a quiet place where
you won’t be disturbed, switch off your devices, and close your eyes. Name a
wish that is attainable or realistic for you — say, landing a new client. Then
imagine for a few minutes what would happen if that wish came true, letting the
images flow freely through your mind. Then change things up. Identify the main
obstacle inside you that stands in the way, and imagine it for a few minutes.
Now on to your plan: If faced with obstacle X, then you will take effective
action Y in response.
WOOP is
simple, easy, and inexpensive — so much so that you might not think it would
work. After all, behavior change usually requires expensive coaching or
training programs, right? Our results suggest not. In a study of health
care providers, we found that those who used WOOP were significantly more
engaged with their work and less stressed than members of a control group. In
studies of college students enrolled in a vocational business program, we
found that it helped them manage their time better. And we’ve
also used WOOP to help school children study more for the PSAT,
do more homework, and get better grades.
Why does it
work? Because the process either helps people understand their wishes are
attainable, giving them energy and direction, heightening their engagement and
prompting them to act; or it helps them realize their wishes are
unrealistic, leading them to disengage and freeing them up to pursue
other, more promising endeavors.
Although
positive thinking feels good in the moment, it often bears a false
promise. Only when it’s paired with a clear view of potential obstacles will it
consistently produce desirable results.
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