Thursday, March 10, 2011

Academic Culture is Not Driven by the Magic of Positive Thinking

As a proponent of cheerfulness and contentment, I felt obligated to read Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America. She has not persuaded me to turn into a fusspot, but I will give her credit for being about 40% right.

Ehrenreich sees "positive thinking" as a kind of popular magic. At its loonier end, it claims that by simply visualizing what you want, you can make it come to you through the "law of attraction."

She finds the roots of today's positive thinking in the New Thought of the 19th century, which gave us Christian Science, the Unity Church, and the many kinds of mind cure. In the 20th century the focus shifted from envisioning health to envisioning wealth, as the hard-working Horatio Alger boys turned into the Power of Positive Thinking Dale Carnegie followers.

Ehrenreich shows that milder versions of positive thinking are endemic to corporations, megachurches, and, especially, to entrepreneurs. Which made we wonder about positive thinking in academic life. I can't think of any professors who are big consumers of motivational books, videos, or live seminars. To say the phrase "I visualize my article published in the leading journal in my field" seems weird. I can't see one academic bucking another up with "If you picture yourself as a full professor, it will come to you; name it and claim it." That just isn't how we think. Academic life is based a strong expectation that results come from work. Sure, there are many irrational factors in an academic institution, especially the large ones. But I rarely hear professors attribute their successes or failures to their ability to adjust their attitude right, which will attract success.

Academics really do believe in critical thinking, sometimes to excess. But the first great fruit of critical thinking is that we don't simply accept the magic of positive thinking.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is this sort of magical thinking becoming more widespread in the U.S.?

tbjohnston said...

Interesting post.

Doesn't a good chunk of academia (certainly the data-driven portion) relies heavily on empirical research? Visualizing a data-set that would prove one's hyptothesis seems risky to me - one might be tempted to (unconsciously?) inject bias to prove the hypothesis.

Gruntled said...

Ehrenreich thinks positive thinking is more common in the U.S. than elsewhere, but here research is not really comparative.

Academic research is not driven by positive thinking. The other aspects of academic life might be, just as other professions are - but I do not find that to be so.

Kerri said...

Today at the immigration conference, Paul Sniderman, discussing some of his research, quipped that "I know it's hard for social scientists to take good news..."

Kerri said...

I feel like positive thinking has a constructive place in one's personal life. But not so much the "I'll get what I want" positive thinking... it seems that the "it will all work out" sort of thinking is healthier.

Anonymous said...

Isn't believing that Obamacare will lower costs a form of magical positive thinking? Doesn't the Academic Culture believe in it?

Gruntled said...

I don't think of Congressional Budget Office estimates as magical thinking - do you?

Anonymous said...

Garbage in garbage out regarding CBO estimates.