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Positive thinking

Positive thinking is an important topic in positive psychology. It involves focusing one's attention on the positive aspects of one's situation and thereby withdrawing one's attention from its negative sides. This is usually seen as a global outlook that applies especially to thinking but includes other mental processes, like feeling, as well. In this sense, it is closely related to optimism. It includes expecting positive things to happen in the future. This positive outlook makes it more likely for people to seek to attain new goals. It also increases the probability of continuing to strive towards pre-existing goals that seem difficult to reach instead of just giving up.

The effects of positive thinking are not yet thoroughly researched, but some studies suggest that there is a correlation between positive thinking and well-being. For example, students and pregnant women with a positive outlook tend to be better at dealing with stressful situations. This is sometimes explained by pointing out that stress is not inherent in stressful situations but depends on the agent's interpretation of the situation. Reduced stress may therefore be found in positive thinkers because they tend to see such situations in a more positive light. But the effects also include the practical domain in that positive thinkers tend to employ healthier coping strategies when faced with difficult situations. This effects, for example, the time needed to fully recover from surgeries and the tendency to resume physical exercise afterward.

But it has been argued that whether positive thinking actually leads to positive outcomes depends on various other factors. Without these factors, it may lead to negative results. For example, the tendency of optimists to keep striving in difficult situations can backfire if the course of events is outside the agent's control. Another danger associated with positive thinking is that it may remain only on the level of unrealistic fantasies and thereby fail to make a positive practical contribution to the agent's life. Pessimism, on the other hand, may have positive effects since it can mitigate disappointments by anticipating failures.

Positive thinking is a recurrent topic in the self-help literature. Here, often the claim is made that one can significantly improve one's life by trying to think positively, even if this means fostering beliefs that are contrary to evidence. Such claims and the effectiveness of the suggested methods are controversial and have been criticized due to their lack of scientific evidence. In the New Thought movement, positive thinking figures in the law of attraction, the pseudoscientific claim that positive thoughts can directly influence the external world by attracting positive outcomes.