Brainhack

18 Look on the Bright Side

“Whether you think you can, or think you can't, you're right.”

Henry Ford

The classic question to find out whether you're a pessimist or an optimist is whether you think your glass is half empty or half full.

Saying half empty and therefore being seen a pessimist would be regarded as the more negative of the two. But a characteristic most people would regard as negative doesn't have to be seen that way.

If you can find the silver lining, you can turn a negative into a positive and a pessimist into a realist.

Alexandra Wesnousky of New York University found in a study that more than 90% of people are inclined to see some sort of positive attribute associated with a typically negative trait.

She then decided to find out if seeing the positive in a negative might actually be beneficial.

“If you can find the silver lining, you can turn a negative into a positive and a pessimist into a realist.”

The participants in the test took an impulsiveness survey. Afterwards, some participants were told they'd scored very high on the test, suggesting they were impulsive individuals, while others were told they'd scored very low.

Next the researchers led some of test participants to believe that impulsivity had a silver lining of making you more creative. These participants read a fake news article that cited scientific evidence to support the impulsive-creative connection. Other participants, meanwhile, read a fake news article refuting that link.

Finally, ...