When 'Positive Thinking' Rings Hollow

I've always been skeptical of the 'self help' industry. Sure there's always room for self improvement and there's a lot of good advice out there, but I often find many of the 'positive thinking' gurus slimy, shallow, and hollow. It seems to me that they play on a person's innate insecurity. Now a study from the University of Waterloo suggests that 'positive affirmations' can do more harm than good if you don't believe them:

As the researchers report in Psychological Science, those with high self-esteem who repeated “I’m a lovable person” scored an average of 31 [out of 35] on their mood assessment compared with an average of 25 by those who did not repeat the phrase. Among participants with low self-esteem, those making the statement scored a dismal average of 10 while those that did not managed a brighter average of 17.

Dr Wood suggests that positive self-statements cause negative moods in people with low self-esteem because they conflict with those people’s views of themselves. When positive self-statements strongly conflict with self-perception, she argues, there is not mere resistance but a reinforcing of self-perception. People who view themselves as unlovable find saying that they are so unbelievable that it strengthens their own negative view rather than reversing it. Given that many readers of self-help books that encourage positive self-statements are likely to suffer from low self-esteem, they may be worse than useless.

"Worse than useless." That's a harsh criticism, but it seems to fit the facts.