A new review of a landmark psychology study challenges the longstanding view that depressed people are wiser because they’re more realistic. The original study has been taught for decades in Intro Psych courses, cited by thousands of scholars, and has crept into the culture as an article of faith.
NYT Source Story: Sadder but Wiser? Maybe Not. [October 18, 2022]
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28 replies on “Sadder but NOT Wiser: New Study Shows Gloomy ‘Eeyore’ People Not More Realistic than Optimists”
Bill’s comments remind me of the words of Screwtape where he spoke of “the law of undulation”, in that humans, living as a hybrid of the spiritual and the physical, would inevitably go through high and low cycles in their lives. His advice to his demon pupil was while the human was at a “peak” he should remind him that it was not going to last but that when he was in a “trough” the goal of the demon was to convince his “patient” that it was never going to end. As someone who has tended to depression (nothing like Bill or Lincoln I am sure) the objective view that Bill spoke of has been of great value to me in the past. If I can step outside of my current state of mind (as an abstract observer) and tell myself that, while inevitable, this current mood is a transient phenomenon (to some extent) I can continue to try to make decisions based on faith that the state of mind that I remember having a few days before (even if it is hidden at the moment) was real and this is a bad time to make life-altering decisions. I actually have a similar view of my emotional peaks and try not to make decisions then also. In the end, I may have missed a few wonders through this mental discipline, but my decisions have been more consistent and longer lasting and my life has been stable even through the times that I am absolutely convinced that “nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go out and eat worms” (as the song says).
OOooohhh this touches a nerve with me.
A. “Psychology says…” which school do you refer? I contend that a “science” with more than 4 basic premises is not a Science. No-30 on this subject.
B. Depression kills and there are different causes, as Bill relates, some are chemical/neurological. However, people believing Psychology’s early study are being led toward that state…for a reason
C. I could go on and on with many examples but until we have a single correct ‘science of Psychology’ we’ll have people changing our words definitions without punishment they deserve…and creating the chaos they wish to bring about.
Even ‘scientists’ can be despicable.
I’ve always been a pretty happy person (for the most part), yet I’ve always told my sons, “CHEERT UP! Things will only get worse.” My reason for looking forward to the future which God has told us will get worse and worse is I’ve read the last chapter. I know that the “end of the world” is actually the “end of THIS world.” Only people who think living without God is preferable to living with Him think the “end of the world” is bad. I know that the “end of THIS world” is the beginning of a FAR better one. Come Lord Jesus!
As Robert A. Heinlein said in Time Enough for Love, “Don’t ever become a pessimist; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun – and neither can stop the march of events.”
I vividly recall having a discussion with an engineer regarding hard drive capacity in the IT world.
This engineer swore up and down, and sideways, that a terabyte drive was a physical impossibility. He had all sorts of evidence to support his position and was very convincing. If you listened to him, weighed his evidence and respected his engineering education and skill set as supported by his degree(s) and real world experience then you would have to agree that a terabyte drive was a physical impossibility.
Despite the fact that there were at that time 2 terabyte hard drives that you could buy on Amazon.
I don’t know if that engineer was depressed, or manic, or something in between those extremes. I do know that despite his very well founded opinion that he was wrong. He was not only merely mistaken, he was able to convince himself to the point where he denied actual, demonstrable reality.
The lesson I walked away from that encounter with was that there were very intelligent people who could convince themselves of pretty much anything and reality had no influence on them. If this could happen to really smart (which is what intelligence is, not ‘smart’ as in know more, smart as in having better problem solving and greater horizons) people who could do this to themselves then those of lesser intelligence were even more prone to doing this too.
No matter how smart or not someone is, it is a mistake to credit the opinions of someone who is capable of doing that to himself. If I had listened to and heeded the argument of that engineer I would still be buying sub-terabyte hard drives because anything that had a higher capacity than that had to be a lie. If this guy could convince himself of a lie regarding his very educated and professional career then he could convince himself of anything at all so any opinion he held was highly suspect.
(Note: I’m not slagging on engineers here. This guy was the exception to the rule. I’ve known many engineers and hold an MCSE – Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer – certificate myself so that makes me a kind of engineer. Sort of. This is the only engineer I’ve ever met who was like this to a degree this obvious.)
Having learned that lesson I began to notice the phenomena more in other areas.
For instance — There are people who call me an “Anti-Trumper” while ignoring the fact that I voted for Donald Trump TWICE and would vote for him AGAIN if he gets the nomination a third time. How can I possibly be an “Anti-Trumper” under those circumstances? Because I do not blindly worship Donald Trump to the exclusion of all other information and that is the criteria they set to delineate pro from anti.
If I point out to them in a constructive manner that Donald Trump has his flaws and would do much better politically if he corrected them that is a criticism of Donald Trump to such people and they leap to his ‘defense’. In ‘defending’ him they are doing him no favors at all, just the opposite.
That is the same thing as that engineer insisting that a terabyte drive is a physical impossibility even though I could buy that and larger capacity drives on Amazon (or anywhere else, Amazon is just an ubiquitous, familiar example).
This pertains to the subject matter in this video because it is the grasp of reality that counts, not a state of mental depression or lack thereof, that determines how accurate someone’s worldview is.
The idea that depressed people are ‘smarter’ is to me an obvious fallacy. Being depressed does not convey a more valid worldview. Claiming it does is a conclusion based on bias and false criteria. I can see no reason that depressed people would hold any more accurate worldview than others.
“Magical thinking” is the problem here, not mental depression or other states of mind. If anything it would seem to me that a gloom-and-doom type would be even less susceptible to recognizing reality if it walked up and bit him on the ass.
The same goes for someone unduly optimistic.
I’m fairly sure those optimistic people in the study with the button and the light Scott refers to are the type capable of lying to themselves on other issues also.
“He was not only merely mistaken, he was able to convince himself to the point where he denied actual, demonstrable reality.”
So, he was a Democrat?
j/k, but that seems to be an ability that I’ve noticed in many on the D-side.
———–
Your comments on ‘Trumpism’ resonate with me as well. There is an expectation that you either love Trump absolutely or hate him completely. There is no middle ground.
Except where there is. I don’t like Trump as a person. He’s a loud, foul-mouthed intolerant libertine.
But he’s a brilliant businessman, who knows that the way to make America successful is to treat it like a business. Set the boundaries, defend them and don’t let yourself be bullied. Take care of your own house first, and the rest will come into line eventually.
But I don’t worship him. I like his policies, but I wish he’d shut the hell up.
————–
“The same goes for someone unduly optimistic.“
Gloomy Gus and Polly-Anna are two sides of the same coin. Neither reflects a healthy or accurate viewpoint. On this I agree with you 100%
I don’t know what party that particular engineer belonged to but I get your joke and yeah, it’s funny but …
That’s why I included the Trump Adoration Syndrome. It’s not just Democrats that have this problem.
With Donald Trump the nation was finally ripe for a Conservative Revolution. His policies were great. America was enjoying a degree of security and prosperity not known in modern times. Continuation of those policies would have done nothing but advance the upswing in our national fortunes.
Yes, the Democrats cheated, they pulled out all the stops and they cheated as hard as they could. I have seen convincing evidence that despite the cheating as little as 10,000 votes made the difference to elect Joe Biden. It could be more, vote-wise but even if it was 100,000 votes that’s still mighty damn close in a national election.
What made the difference? Why was Trump who is arguably the most popular President since Roosevelt and certainly since Reagan not able to bridge that minor gap despite the cheating?
Because his personality sucks and even as bad as his personality sucks he still came that close. If he had channeled Ronald Reagan and emulated his personality instead of being a dick all the time, Donald Trump would be our President today and we wouldn’t be in the huge messes we face right now.
The difference between Trump winning and Trump losing, in spite of the Democrat cheating, was his pride and — Pride goeth before a fall.
Yes, the Democrats cheating is at fault, for the most part. Had they not cheated Trump would be POTUS this moment. Had Trump not insisted on acting like a dick all the time, he would be POTUS even so. Some of this belongs on Trump’s head too.
I’m not ‘offended’ by Donald Trump, I’ve know the type before and I’ve known worse. My being offended has nothing to do with this.
I’m talking about strategic and tactical applications. Being a total dick is not a successful strategy nor tactic. He damn near won anyway but that was in spite of, not because of him having a personality that sucks.
I’m not saying he needed to be nicer. That’s BS the Trump worshippers always trot out and ‘nice’ is irrelevant. Reagan wasn’t nice, Reagan was tough AND smart. Ronnie knew how to chop his adversaries off at the knees and do so without being a dick about it.
Part of the reason we have a garden vegetable propped up as a puppet for an unelected committee of Leftists running this nation is Trump’s fault. It’s not the only reason, it’s not all of the reasons but it is a reason. I’ve covered the major exceptions. You can’t control your enemy, you can only control yourself and self control is something Donald Trump sorely lacks.
All of that said, if he gets the nomination I’ll vote for him again, for a third time. He was a great President despite his having a worse than useless personality.
The thing to remember is that Trump will not usher in a new era of conservative populism and prosperity. He’s not even interested in doing that. He will usher in more Trumpism and he’s not going to be here forever. We need to look beyond Trump, he’s the beginning of the story not the end all and be all of it.
It is not just the volume of storage that continues to amaze me, but the reduction in size. The advances in this one sector are truly a shining example of what demand for products can do to technology and supply.
The fact that I can store all of the volume on my main PC in a device that is slightly bigger than a deck of cards, for which I paid relatively little 2 years ago, and that device has more than 50,000 x’s the storage of my first PC and that change happened not only in my life time, but in my adult life time is staggering.
The two best similar analogies I can think of are automobiles and airplanes.
My Grandfather was born in 1906; 20 years after Mr. Benz designed the first auto. (at least I think it was him).
By the time he retired in the late 60s, what he was driving bore little resemblence to the cars of 1906, or 1926. By his death in 1999, the changes were mostly under the hood. But a huge change in less than a century.
Airplanes – well. Take a walk through the Udvar-Hazy museum at Dulles. You can walk around and look at the earliest aircraft, which were not terrible different from kites, and then see an SR-71, which was developed in 1964, only 6 decades after the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.
Again, since then the main improvements have been “under the hood” so to speak. Engine technology and digital control systems. Also driven by the improvements in computer/digital technology.
When people deride the space program as a waste of taxpayer money, it chafes me badly. I tell them to look in their pocket at their phone, at their car, and at our ability to transport people around the world quickly and safely (if uncomfortably).
Hmm – looks around, a bit off topic. Smirks, gets down off soap box. 😉
Lol, one of the nice things about being here behind the paywall is that you can soapbox to your heart’s content. Most of the time out in the wild you get a bunch of smug SOBs saying “TL;DR”. Screw them and the horse they rode in on.
Anything worth saying takes more words than a 256 character Tweet. Which is among the many reasons I don’t use Twit. Yes, I demoted that company by removing the ‘ter’ and I think that my name more correctly describes their real nature.
It’s not only the astonishing progress of technology that amazes me. It’s how cheap it all is. Years ago a decent security camera wasn’t IP accessible, was around $3000, only had max res of 480p, didn’t have infrared night vision, lasted a few years and was usually black and white even at that price. Now I can buy a PTZ 1080p IP camera that lasts me about 5 years in outdoor installations for less than $50.
That’s just one example, there are many.
I keep a spare 500 GB SSD drive loaded up and ready to replace the C:\ drive in my main system. I can get a good, name brand SSD of that capacity for less than $40. The spare drive allows me to bring the system down, pop that drive in a removable drive bay on the front of the machine, change a setting in BIOS and start right up again. Total down time for a catastrophic problem with my root drive is about 10 minutes and most of that is boot time. When there’s a problem that’s a time saving life saver. Then I just copy that drive back to the one that had the issues and my spare is ready to go again.
Less than $50 is pretty cheap insurance for uptime continuity on a machine I use for personal and commercial purposes.
Just a few years ago when SSD drives became available I bought a Crucial 165 GB drive for around $150. SSD drives are way, way faster than mechanical drives and even faster than a mechanical RAID array. I’m still using that one in a different less critical machine but the price on those has dropped to an astonishing degree.
Tech has improved so much in my lifetime that I’m constantly amazed at the things I can do now that I would not only not have dreamed of a few years back, I wouldn’t even have known to dream about them.
People who deride the space program as a waste of money are ignorant sods. But then there are people who think the internet is the downfall of mankind too.
Back in the day if I wanted to know something I had to go to the public library and dig through an arbitrary card catalog. Arbitrary because it depended on the librarians exactly how they applied the Dewey Decimal System. If I couldn’t find what I needed I had to search microfiche catalogs and apply for an interlibrary loan. If the information I needed was even available it could take weeks or even months to get it in my grubby little paws.
Now it takes about two minutes to find any information I want. Give me Boolean search parameter phrasing over the Dewey Decimal System any day of the week.
When I was in grade school my parents bought a Collier’s Encyclopedia. I read it cover to cover and anxiously awaited the annual appendices. I don’t think I’ve even picked up a physical volume of an encyclopedia in decades. Not because I lost my interest in information, because I now have a much better, much faster, much cheaper way to get that information.
People who think the internet is bad don’t know any better because they gave up on learning decades ago. It’s not the tech that’s bad. It’s the people who use it and how they apply it that’s bad. Just like firearms and many other things, it’s what you do with it that counts and bad people will use anything they can get their hands on for bad ends. Be that tech a hammer, saw, car, gun or the entire knowledge of mankind accessible from your desk or a device that fits in your pocket.
Your parents bought a Colliers Encyclopedia when you were in grade school? Nice!
Mine bought the Encyclopedia Brittanica when I was in high school.
And yes, I read it cover to cover.
Twice.
I was so bummed that they didn’t get the Britannica because at the time I’d never heard of Colliers and didn’t realize it was rated the best — and equally happy they didn’t get the World Book Encyclopedia. As it turned out, the Colliers was probably the best one they could have gotten for me at that time. I used that encyclopedia all through school. Then it sat in its shelves next to my Mom’s chair thereafter and she used it all the time to look up things she wanted to know.
I come from a family that loves feeding the elephant’s child.
I was blessed to have a Dad who bought the classic Practical Handyman’s Encyclopedia, which sparked my interest in woodworking, love of tools, designing and building useful things. Loved those books, long gone now.
A popular “study” publicized in 1979? Not worth 2 cents. This was the Golden Age of Junk Science. Remember that in 1979, as a nation we had a “wheel in the ditch” with Jimmy Carter’s “national malaise”, on the heels of two oil embargoes, worldwide recession, stagflation, Soviet aggression, terrorism (sound familiar?)….. no wonder crap like this caught on. Thank God an eternal optimism came along in the form of Ronald Reagan. Too bad that while the rest of us were enjoying a respite from Doomsday, the academics continued pumping their poison into the minds of their charges.
Like Steve – I took some psych classes early in college, and even then we discussed this study. I argued in class that the premise and set up were flawed:
1 – you took people and categorized them through self-diagnosis.
2 – As Scott points out the big lie is there was no chance of control of the light with the switch.
(unless they had other subjects where there was a high correlation, perhaps with a consistent delay, but I don’t recall that being brought up)
What I thought was being measured was people’s ego, or narcissism. How much do I think I can control things that are actually beyond my control?
If the light blinks with whatever random generator it has, but I think my flipping of the switch controls it, then I am giving myself power I don’t actually have. That to me was textbook narcissistic behavior.
That has no correlation to whether you are sad or happy, optimist or pessimist, depressed or unreasonably ebullient.
BTW – the professor did not like me contradicting the study’s premise.
Colleges might be able to avoid some of their financial woes by re-registering as churches… at least the for profit ones. The state owned ones should be in trouble for using tax money on religious expenditures (the same thing that anti-school choice people decry).
“professor did not like me contradicting” should be “the pastor / priest”…
“You can’t have learning here, this is a university!”
As Bruce Dickenson said so well, “But the truth of all predictions is always in your hands”
Steve made a good point about lefties thriving on this negativity stuff. It’s part of their lust for power. If you feel pessimistic and not in control, you are more likely to seek others (leftist politicians) to “fix” things for you, thus playing into their hands.
Excellent, as always. When I studied sales with Wally Long, he spoke extensively about using the Reticular Activation System to build good habits to create positive future outcomes. We use it all the time, for good or ill, whether we realize it or not.
Well, Scott, there ARE outside forces that affect your destiny. But it does not follow that you have no control over your destiny. We have more control than most people think. It’s far from total. But Ford was right. If you think you can’t, you’re right.
Wow, Bill, that storm analogy really good. … I was probably clinically depressed from about age 12 to …. my early to mid 20’s. I didn’t know it until suddenly the black dog was gone. I never really knew he was there until he left. I was lucky, I think, in that he left on his own for whatever reason. I have my theories but I kinda don’t care, I’m just glad he left and there were no drugs needed to make him fade (not saying people don’t need them I’m just grateful I didn’t). He’s gone, and really hasn’t been back.
Earlier in life, I noticed the same thing. In my analogy it wasn’t a storm, but I realized that periods of deeper hardship were temporary. I called it “just putting my head down and trudging through” the …. well I had no word for it, but “the suck” would do nicely. I would come out on the other side and everything would be ok, eventually. I was even able to build on this enough to realize that my pretty sucky childhood would end and I would be on my own and I’d probably be able to have a better life once I was free of the circumstances that made it sucky. (Turned out I brought some of those with me in my head for a few years but was able to identify and eject them).
I lost myself in music for those years. It was my best friend, and therapy for me in the end. I remember during the end of it I would alternately listen to “The Wall” and Eric Johnson’s “Tones” … two very contrasting musical works. One very dark and depressing, the other light and optimistic. Something was getting worked out in my psyche. I think Pink Floyd showed me my life really wasn’t all that bad, relatively speaking, and Johnson showed me how to look at it in a more optimistic light. But that’s just one theory I have.
At any rate, as an adult, with no musical training outside of listening to it and plucking on the guitar (after age 40) and … I came up with a whole album of originals in a (mostly) autobiographical piece.
My favorite is “Alive”, which looks back at those years, and where I am now. It’s a grateful ode to my “character arc”.
Sorry about your depression. I’m glad you’ve found relief. Train that dog to at least sit and lay down if it’s gotta be in the room.
Here’s a lame video of me playing along with … me … I always thought the video of this should be various shots of me driving the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible on a sunny day with various appropriate clips for some of the lyrics …
Just sharing. I did the album for myself. I’ll never make any money on it. Bet I sunk $1,000 in it, but it was well worth it. I had a blast and it was theraputic.
(49) Alive (Original) – YouTube
Wow! You have real talent! Loved the rhythm, the lyrics, and the tempo. Such a respite from the lousy music that is out there now. Thank you for sharing!
There are actual studies, reproduced and verified, showing that thinking about heads in a heads or tails scenario effects the number.
So, what is an Eeyore to do?
As a trained engineer I’m a realist. Given a flawed world and flawed humans, some say I’m a pessimist. But given a decision , action or situation I think what is the worst than could happen and what is the best that can happen.
I’m still waiting for either extreme to happen in my life. Its always somewhere in between.
My worst thoughts can be pretty bad, but I know they are unlikely. (I have seen them in other peoples life).
My best have been called naive. They are also unlikely. But I’ve seen them occur.
As I age and know more, I realize more that can go wrong.
Conversely, as I age and know more, I can see fixes better and better estimate the odds.
What does that make me?
I think that makes me an realist.
Trust, but verify indeed.
Been having this “discussion” with several of our designers at work. Their protocol (design guide) has been to design for all worst cases: highest temp, most stress, highest rotational speed, . . . you get the idea. I have been trying to insert some likelihood estimations in order to reduce costs. as an example, it is demonstrably shown that the highest stress occurs at installation of parts at zero speed and that the stress reduces as speed increases. Therefore taking highest stress and highest speed is (to steal a phrase) illogical.
Want to try and guess the response, Harry?
[spoiler title=”I bet you get this right”] But that’s how we have always done it. (because it is safer) [/spoiler]
Drives me bonkers.
Oh, and have a gif
Ah yes. “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” That way, if not examined for alternatives, leads to obsolescence. Like wood fired automobile engines.
The other is “But it is the industry standard!” Or ‘But everyone else is doing it that way!”
For some reason a parents responds to the latter comes to mind: “If everyone is jumping off a cliff, would you do it too?”
Right, the safer argument always irks me, too.
It should be, ok, what happens if this part fails? What is the outcome? Does the equipment stop working? Does the equipment fail catastrophically? Can it do so in a way to cause harm to something other than the equipment? Can it injure people? Those are all different answers. If the result of a part failure is for the machine to shut down in an otherwise safe manner, and the likelihood of that failure is minimal, that part does not need to be designed in a such a way that it could never, ever fail.
That type of design doesn’t get us to the moon, or more relevantly, keep us in business.
It is the design equivalent of “But mine goes to 11”
Never, ever fail. Riiiiight.😆 Entropy. Murphy’s law. Imperfect material. Imperfect design. Imperfect assembly.
“Never let the perfect become the enemy of the good.”
And you have the law of diminishing returns. At one point you have to go “Good enough.”
And trust me, I have to be careful of striving for the impossible: perfection.
I can let go at “good enough”, but don’t like it.
It’s fun watching you two nerds gripe about the idiots you have to deal with. It keeps me from feeling like my situation is something special and uncommon … 😉