Think Positive. Be Positive. (But Only in Moderation)

"Think positive!"  "Look on the bright side!"  "Have faith!"  "Don't lose hope!"

These expressions, often heard and said, encourage their recipients to adopt a positive attitude. We often think of a positive attitude as an outlook on life that is optimistic, confident, and faithful, associating postivity with focusing on the good in our lives, believing in the future, and believing in ourselves. Many of our associations with positivity involve faith: faith that the future will yield favorable outcomes, faith in ourselves and our abilities, faith in others, and faith in the world.

An image demonstrating the popular
philosophy that positive thinking, if done
well, is the key to success

For many of us, thinking positively and having faith are unquestionably benevolent behaviors. Throughout the postmodern age this perspective has subtly spread, something author and blogger Lara Owen attributes to the self-help industry. "It is an oft-repeated tenet of the self-help industry," she writes, "that positive thinking is something to strive for and that if you do it well enough, you can get everything you want." Many people today consequently generalize positivity as constructive, stabilizing, and encouraging growth, and negativity as destructive, destabilizing, and propagating failure. As a result, we disregard the perils of positive thinking and the potential advantages of negative thinking, and fail to understand that a synthesis of both attitudes is possible--and perhaps most beneficial.

Before we can consider a synthesis of both types of thinking, it's important to understand how positive thinking falls short of encouraging productivity (its advertised benefit). Many of the strategies suggested for achieving purely positive thinking act as double-edged swords, helping people feel happier while getting less done. For example, in an Inc.com article, writer Geoffrey James recommends that to become positive thinkers we should "focus on what's going well" and "get a sense of proportion" in our lives. Such strategies promote ignorance of emotions resulting from problems in life. This ignorance can lead to an inhibited ability to acknowledge problems and delayed or insufficient responses to problems. Another of James' suggestions--to "improve your body chemistry" through trying not to encourage or surrender to bad moods--also serves to encourage avoidance of emotions through suppressing their manifestations. Such ignorance and avoidance allowed by positive thinking strategies are detrimental because they involve repression of unresolved emotions, which leads to psychological instability and vulnerability.

Another problematic aspect of positive thinking is visualization, the formation of mental images in one's mind of favorable future outcomes. SuccessConsciousness.com founder Remez Sassoon explains visualizing positive outcomes "is the primary tool for attracting success and prosperity." Critics like expert blogger Dr. Heidi Halvorson, however, believe visualization results in reduced success and productivity, and point to studies that show that the brain reacts to the mental images as it would they were real (you can read Dr. Halvorson's pertinent blog post here).

Surely a purely negative attitude--devoid of faith or confidence in oneself or the future--also involves its share of destructive distorted thinking. Instead of suffering at one end or the other of the the spectrum, however, it is more realistic to adopt an outlook on life that involves a synthesis of positive and negative thinking.

This graphic shows how a realistic outlook contrasts
purely positive and negative attitudes

Such an outlook would comprise of confidence in oneself coupled with a healthy acceptance of the possibility of failure. A method for achieving this outlook--fantasy realization--is outlined in an APA journal article published by the NYU psychologists Dr. Halvorson mentioned in her blog. "Fantasy realization theory states that when people contrast their fantasies about a desired future with reflections on present reality, a necessity to act is induced that leads to the activation and use of relevant expectations." Thus, for the general, mentally healthy population, the highest degree of productivity, efficiency, and success can be achieved through a combination of positive, faithful thinking and negative thinking.

Landing the Helicopter: How Faith Can Help Overbearing Parents Back Off

We've all heard of "helicopter parents" or "tiger moms"--parents that consistently hover over their children, sniffing out possible dangers in their lives. Helicopter parenting is an approach to child rearing that typically involves crossing the line from behavioral control over children to psychological control. Many parents using this parenting style not only gear children towards positive and beneficial behaviors (doing homework, going to school), but instill high expectations, consistently evaluating their children's performance against these expectations and invoking certain emotional responses in children based on their performance.

Some parents or specialists may argue in favor of helicopter parenting, but their views are undermined by our society's contemporary negative attitude towards the approach. Through the psychological control that helicopter parents extend over their children, parents can damage their children's individuality/identity, independence, psychological stability, and inhibit their sense of accomplishment.

But why, then, do some parents still willingly seize control of their child's motivations, ideas, assignments, grades, friends, and feelings? One possibility is fear. In overbearing parents, this seems to stem from insecurities that their children will not "make it" in the real world. TIME magazine writer Nancy Gibbs writes that it is this fear that manifests itself in obsessive behaviors, pushing parents to "demand homework in preschool, produce the snazzy bilingual campaign video for the third-grader's race for class rep, [and] continue to provide the morning wake-up call long after he's headed off to college." However, if the fear and its manifestation are ultimately detrimental to a child, what can already overbearing parents do to improve?

A crucial part of parenting out of faith is displaying confidence
in children

New York Times Op-Ed contributor Madeline Levine suggests that while it is impossible for parents to rid themselves of fear, they can take steps to limit its manifestation in their actions. "The child’s job is to grow, yours is to control your anxiety so it doesn’t get in the way of [your child's] reasonable moves toward autonomy." Ms. Levine's parenting model can be likened to parenting out of faith rather than fear. In parenting out of faith, parents relax their control over their children and demonstrate confidence in their children's capacity for working out their own problems. This confidence can be expressed verbally through encouragement or implicitly through actions. Parents also allow children to take risks--and potentially fail.


Failure, though feared and stigmatized, is important for development. Neil Sjoberg, a youth worker from London, expresses the importance of learning to fail. "Children need to be taught that failure is frequent and normal, it is not the end of the world and we should all help this by a cultural shift in admitting that we failed. Only by learning to lose can we achieve success." Learning from mistakes also allows children to have genuine experiences, and to understand themselves and the world around them more comprehensively.

Ultimately, parents should recognize that their parenting style is one of many factors that influence a child's development, among genetics and outside environment. This means that it is not realistic or advisable for parents to put it on themselves to ensure their child is successful, or the most successful. Instead, parents should acknowledge their children's individuality, and offer the most opportunities for their children to grow and develop so that they are as well-equipped as possible to enter the "real world."

Argentina Escapes Traps, But Relies on Faith It Won't Default

Paul Collier's 2007 book
lays out four traps that
the world's most struggling
countries are caught in, and
how they can rise out of the
traps

Argentina is a democratic, so-called second-world country in southern South America. Though throughout the last decade Argentina has suffered from economic woes, government corruption, increasing rates of crime and decreased investor interest, it still manages to house the highest quality of life of Latin America. Argentina's resource wealth, high literacy rates, and varied exports are among the factors that have allowed the country to enjoy middle-income status. These factors have also contributed to Argentina's avoidance of the four developmental traps Paul Collier lays out in his book The Bottom Billion--the conflict trap, the natural resources trap, the landlocked with bad neighbors trap, and the bad governance in a small country trap. That is not to say, however, that Argentina has been free of problems or conflicts. Argentina's recent battle against "vulture" funds, for example, have created the possibility that Argentina might default on debt in the future. Argentina's government, however, has had faith that they will not be forced to pay the vulture funds, as the US ruling that mandated this payment violates Argentine law.

To begin with, Argentina has managed to escape Collier's "conflict trap"--a developmental hindrance resulting from military, societal, or governmental conflict within a country--through its strong governmental structure and regulation. Argentina, however, possesses two of the three risk factors Collier outlines for conflict: a predominant ethnic group (in Argentina's case, white people with mostly Spanish/Italian roots) and abundance of natural resources (petroleum, metals, plains). In other countries, the imbalance between ethnic groups and profits from natural resources that can finance rebellion serve to spark conflict. Argentina only evades Collier's risk factor of a high percentage of young and uneducated males; while some investors attribute their uncertainty about investing in Argentina because of an "inadequately educated workforce", the educational life expectancy of Argentine children (16 years) is identical to that of children in the United States. Argentina has also not experienced a coup or civil war recently, which makes it less likely to experience another in the near future.

A chart showing Argentina's export categories and the
profits gained from each (in millions of US dollars) shows
the exports are not dominated by one natural resource

The natural resources trap--which holds that large profits from natural resources can actually harm a country's development, if mishandled--also fails to affect Argentina. Argentina is an export-based economy with a strong, diversified industrial base that has prevented its exports from being undermined by a single profitable natural resource; in other words, Argentina does not have "dutch disease." In fact, Argentina's second largest export after agricultural fodder is motor vehicles and parts (less than a million dollar difference exists between the profits from each). Additionally, Argentina has not in recent years tapped into a large reserve of a natural resource like Zimbabwe did in discovering fruitful diamond fields six years ago. For this reason, the government has not lost accountability for how the profits from a large, profitable resource are handled. There has also been little conflict over ownership of the prominent natural resources in Argentina; Argentina has reduced the chances of conflict by nationalizing its largest oil firm about six months ago.

Argentina has also avoided Collier's third trap--the 'landlocked with bad neighbors trap'--through trading globally, not only with its neighbors, and having an acceptable (though struggling) infrastructure. Argentina's neighbors--Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, and Uruguay--have not recently suffered from conflict or infrastructure issues that directly affected Argentina's ability to trade with those countries. A free trade agreement between Argentina, many of its neighbors, and Venezuela--Mercosur--also serves to promote positive, productive relations between Argentina and the nations that border it.

Foreign firm investors in Argentina cite government-enforced tax rates/labor
regulations and political instability as strong concerns related to their
investment in the country. Argentina has recently experienced a severe
lack in foreign investor confidence in the nation.

Argentina, while it does suffer from bad governance, is not stuck in Collier's fourth trap, "bad governance in a small country." It does not qualify as being trapped in that way because it is not a microstate--a sovereign state with an area of less than 1,000 km² or a population of less than 500,000--and as such does not detract potential investors because of its small size and unfamiliarity. Nonetheless, Argentina's history of questionable political decisions over the last half-century has served to deter investors more and more over time. Argentina's alternating military dictatorships, subsequent neo-liberal policies, and its failed democratic government in 1983 resulted in massive government debt, high unemployment rates, extremely high prices of goods, and rampant inflation. These problems reached a peak in the 1990s/early 2000s when the country was forced to default on its debt. This decade-old default combined with the high taxes Argentina levies on imports, the regulations it imposes on trade and labor, and its recent streak of nationalizations have made investors wary of investing in the country and have eliminated much-needed foreign exchange from the country's economy. Nonetheless, Argentina's strong exports and solid growth rate (that was able to rebound quickly after the economic collapse of 2008) have prevented its bad governance from grossly undermining its ability to remain a middle-income nation.

Recently, some ramifications of Argentina's 2001 default have endangered the country's financial state, and have left Argentina relying on faith that a federal appeals court will rule in their favor. These "ramifications" involve hedge funds that refused to take part in a massive debt restructuring that took place in Argentina after the country defaulted on its debt in 2001. The investors that did participate in the restructuring--93% of bondholders, in fact--agreed to a 70% reduction in what Argentina would pay them. A U.S. court ruling in November decided that Argentina would need to comply with the hedge funds--dubbed "vulture funds" by Argentina's government--and pay the defaulted creditors $1.3 billion dollars. As journalist Sujata Rao of Reuters writes, "the U.S. court ruling upheld the principle of pari passu, meaning debtors cannot pick and choose between creditors." However, Argentina appealed the ruling because paying the creditors the $1.3 billion dollars would surely have forced the country to default on debt owed to the creditors that agreed to the restructuring. Such a default would have had detrimental global implications. Additionally, the U.S ruling violated Argentine law. A federal appeals court has agreed to hear the case in late February.

Vulture funds like those Argentina
is battling against have also affected
poor countries in Africa and Latin
America

Nonetheless, Argentina's government has had faith that it would not need to pay since shortly after the U.S. hearing in November. Both President Fernandez de Kirchner and an Argentine economic minister have released press statements asserting they would not pay the vulture funds. They could not imagine being forced to comply with a ruling that violates their law and would surely cause a national default. Though this affirmation of Argentina's government's power over the petty, voracious vulture funds may give the country some leverage over the funds, the judge that imposed the November ruling against Argentina--U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa--has responded negatively to Argentina's staunch defiance of his ruling. It would be advisable that Argentina, instead of relying on faith that the federal appeals court will rule in their favor, accept the possibility that the appeals court will force them to fork up the $1.3 billion dollars they owe to the vulture funds. After accepting this possibility, Argentina should take practical measures to reduce the potential for a national default or reduce the impact of a possible national default, should Argentina be forced to pay the vulture funds. Though relying on faith is an advisable technique when no further action can be taken, Argentina should take advantage of cautionary measures while it still has time.

Believe in Mitt: Faith and Republican Voter Turnout

     The approaching presidential election is uniquely significant: the minority vote is expected to be historically large and decisive, while overall voter turnout will likely drop to its lowest level in 8 years. This election also holds in its hands is the future of the Republican Party. As Obama has at least a 52 percentage point advantage over Romney in national Hispanic support--a very important source of votes in this election--in addition to other minority support, a victory for Obama might lead the GOP to investigate how it could garner more minority support.

     In spite of the importance of the minority vote in this election, the Romney campaign recognizes its deficiency in this area and is instead focusing on mobilizing Republican-leaning voters through faith. Journalist Ezra Klein of Washington Post writes that the Romney campaign "is emphasizing momentum. Confidence. Even inevitability." Inspiring faith in Republican voters is key to getting them to vote because--while most Republicans likely harbor strong negative sentiments towards the president--they may not go and vote if they feel their side will inevitably lose. Obama's lead in nationwide election polls has fluctuated since last February, only barely disappearing (according to a Real Clear Politics poll) at the beginning of October. Though these numbers demonstrate the increasing closeness of the race, Obama's constant lead in the polls and projected electoral college with no doubt discourages some Republicans, who fail to see the power of their vote. However, if the Romney campaign can make Republican-leaning voters believe that Romney will win, their desire to be a part of the victory can in itself draw them to the polls.

     The Romney campaign is trying to inspire this faith of an inevitable victory in different ways. One method involves simply claiming--through press statements, physical campaigning, or electronic communication with potential voters through social media--to have the majority of votes. The true origin of these claims--whether drawn from favorable polls out of the diverse  pool of polls, or simply manufactured numbers--is debatable. However, an uninformed voter might emotionally reason that such claims are true and unquestionable because of the confident tone with which they are expressed. An e-mail that I recently received from the Romney campaign demonstrates this point:

For the more informed voter--who may know that early voting results from a handful of key battleground states have depicted democratic victories--this e-mail's claim that Romney leads by a seven percent margin is difficult to swallow. This e-mail implies an unsettling answer to such voters' questioning: President Obama and his campaign are fixing the polls. It suggests that voters reading the e-mail trust Romney, not Obama or the press. This raises yet another technique that the Romney campaign is using to garner faith in their campaign: portraying the opposing candidate as dishonest, corrupt, and bound to lose. While the last two encouraged sentiments may be newer for Republicans, the first--that Obama is dishonest--is effective because it compounds Republican distrust for Obama, rooted in Obama's perceived failure to fulfill his promise of rebounding the economy, among other things. The Romney campaign believes inspiring these sentiments is in itself enough to mobilize Republican-leaning voters.

America: Losing faith?

A recent Pew Research Center survey shows that 1 in 5 American adults now claims no religious affiliation. The percentage of nonreligious adults has risen 4%--from 15% to 19%--in the last five years. The study also found that young adults under 30 were even less religious: 1 in 3 does not identify with a particular religion.

Initially, one faced with such statistics might deduce that we are losing "faith" as a society, but I would argue that no faith is being sacrificed. Faith, as I defined it in my first blog post, is "a belief that is not based on proof." Atheism requires such faith, as God has not been and cannot be proved or disproved. However, atheists share the nonreligious category with agnostics and those who simply have no religious ties, and this can be misleading. The percentage of atheists adults in America has actually risen by 4% the last seven years--just the amount that the nonreligious category rose within a similar time frame--and for this reason I would argue that we are not losing "faith."

We are rather losing one type of faith--religious faith. The number of self-identified "religious" people has dropped from 73% to 60% of Americans in the last seven years. And the percentage of people who seldom attend services but describe themselves as religious fell 10% in the last five years. This data suggests that adults are less religious now than their parents were, and perhaps that adults are becoming more honest about their degree of religiousness. 

As common deductions from news of decreased religious faith in a country include moral decline and emotional stability, we must ask these questions: What are the implications of America's decline in religious faith? Are they measurable? To begin with, while America is home to a plethora of religions and religious convictions and each has a unique worldview, we can agree that "religion" generally implies a basic system of values that so-called "religious" people should adhere to. And because these values are typically seen as "good" and "moral" (except in the situation of fundamentalists), many would deduce that less religious faith means less morality. This view has been endorsed mainly by the religious/through religious means, from a Johnny Cash 1970's-1980's gospel song that reads "What I saw filled me with pity / poverty, crime, and misery / in this great big godless city / where they're struggling to survive" to Rick Santorum's comment that "Satan has his sights on the United States of America." However, moral decline is far from true for our country: Murder, infidelity, divorce, and teenage pregnancy, among other things, are at very low levels today, while the graduation rate is the highest of the last two decades. Is it possible that religion and society have slightly different moral compasses, or that much of society's moral compass is historically based on Christianity? Yes. But on a fundamental level, data shows that we are not an increasingly immoral society.

Gallup survey shows more church attendance equates to 
more positive emotions

The only measurable effect that the loss of religious faith seems to have on our society is emotional stability. A Gallup survey conducted in 2011 showed a correlation between church attendance and more positive daily moods. Another Gallup-conducted survey in 2009-2010 shows that very religious people have lower rates of depression and have more positive daily moods than the nonreligious (the moderately religious, however, had the highest incidence rates of depression/lowest daily moods). While that study could not identify the exact cause for the correlation, Gallup suspects that the "salutary" effect of strong religious faith on one's mind has something to do with it. Therefore, if there is any pronounced (or measurable) effect of a loss of religious faith in American society, it may be a slight  decline in average emotional health. As less and less people profess to be "very religious"--the most emotionally-healthy (at least by these narrow standards) category of people surveyed--it is sensible to assume that less people will also head the salutary effects of strong religious faith, and thus that incidence rates of depression will rise (however slightly or gradually), along with daily negative moods.

A New Dawning

   A week or two ago I stumbled upon an article that challenged my conservative attitude towards the topic of faith. Titled "Why Faith is Important," the Psychology Today article explained that faith is a common "expression of hope" in times of uncertainty.

A comical image that highlights the unlikely
presence of faith in non-religious, rational
convictions.

I was initially confused: Wasn't faith only a product of religious belief?

An ardent Serbian-Orthodox Christian, I didn't know faith without God. I often pitied atheists I knew because they seemed incapable of hope beyond rational expectations.

But the article exposed me to a critical truth: faith knows no religious boundaries.

Because faith works on different levels, I realized how pertinent it is to our modern world. Faith is an incessant instigator for war between groups of different religious and ethnic backgrounds, and at the same time a type of belief prospective political leaders like Mitt Romney are trying to inspire within groups of struggling people with little hope. It is also what we as students must garner in collaborators when divvying up parts of a group project.

Today, the origins, effects, and prominence of faith are very substantive topics to explore--and can be informed by studies of different types of faith--faith in oneself and in others, religious faith, spirituality-related faith, to name a few. 

While I feel a strong personal connection to religious faith, the prospect of analyzing nonreligious faith, smaller, displays of faith in oneself and others, and faith in larger concepts intrigues me. Through gaining an understanding of many different kinds of faith, I believe anyone can become more tolerant of people of different religious backgrounds, ethnicities, epochs, and convictions--because becoming aware of the commonality of faith can bind us together.

And for that reason I'm starting this blog.

Though barely a legal adult and very influenced by Christianity, I have this assurance that my unyielding curiosity in the psychological phenomenon of faith and my concern for fleshing out topics will facilitate a reflective, objective discussion. And that this discussion will hopefully lead to understanding and tolerance.

For the purposes of this blog, I will define faith as "a belief that is not based on proof." This more accurately represents my interpretation of faith than Nietzsche's quote, "faith means not wanting to know what is true." 

As an ending note, I would like to hash over the goals of this blog:
1). To attempt to answer the questions: Who has faith? What in fact is faith? How does it operate?
2). To explore different types of faith, and varying situations where faith is at play
3). To analyze distinct perspectives on/theories about faith

Hopefully our exploration of faith will serve as a new dawning for both of us.

Sincerely,
Tina