Positive thinking

Lynn Williams, University of Strathclyde  Y⁠o⁠u⁠r⁠ ⁠p⁠a⁠r⁠t⁠n⁠e⁠r⁠’⁠s⁠ ⁠p⁠e⁠r⁠s⁠o⁠n⁠a⁠l⁠i⁠t⁠y⁠ ⁠c⁠a⁠n⁠ ⁠i⁠n⁠f⁠l⁠u⁠e⁠n⁠c⁠e⁠ ⁠y⁠o⁠u⁠r⁠ ⁠l⁠i⁠f⁠e⁠ ⁠i⁠n⁠ ⁠a⁠l⁠l⁠ ⁠s⁠o⁠r⁠t⁠s⁠ ⁠o⁠f⁠ ⁠w⁠a⁠y⁠s⁠. For example, studies have shown that a conscientious partner i⁠s⁠ ⁠g⁠o⁠o⁠d⁠ ⁠f⁠o⁠r⁠ ⁠y⁠o⁠u⁠r⁠ ⁠h⁠e⁠a⁠l⁠t⁠h. Our latest study shows that they are also good for your quality of life. Personality reflects a person’s characteristic way of thinking, feeling and behaving. Psychologists tend to examine personality across five key traits : extroversion, openness to experiences, conscientiousness, emotional stability and agreeableness. Typically, these traits are measured using questionnaires that help psychologists build up a profile of a person’s personality. Personality characteristics can have a strong impact on health, even influencing how long you live. Research shows that the more conscientious a person is, the longer they live. Conscientiousness is defined by high levels of self-d...

Lowri Dowthwaite, University of Central Lancashire   Happiness is big business, with sales of self-help books in the UK reaching record levels in the past year. Perhaps that’s because happiness is no longer the birthright of the elite. Just half a century ago, psychologist Warner Wilson seemed to suggest that you are less likely to be happy if you’re uneducated and poor when he stated that a happy person generally is “young, healthy, well educated, well paid, extroverted, optimistic, worry-free, religious, married, with high self-esteem, high job morale, modest aspirations, of either sex and of a wide range of intelligence”. Today happiness is something we can all aspire to. But, as many of us try out gratitude journals, meditation and positive affirmations, we often discover that they don’t make us substantially happier. The same often goes for reaching the goals that society values – such as marriage, an interesting job or physical fitness. So is happiness just a my...

Niia Nikolova, University of Strathclyde  The unexamined life is not worth living, said the Greek philosopher Socrates . He was reflecting on the expression “Know Thyself” – an aphorism inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi and one of the ultimate achievements in ancient Greece. While we walk around the world more or less successful in our endeavours, many of us sometimes have the nagging feeling that we don’t truly know ourselves. Why do we really feel and behave the way we do? While we have some ideas about who we are, our understanding of ourselves is often patchy and inconsistent. So, is self-knowledge something we should strive for, or are we better off living in blissful ignorance? Let’s examine the research. By self-knowledge , psychologists mean having an understanding of our feelings, motivations, thinking patterns and tendencies. These give us a stable sense of self-worth and a secure grip on our values and motivations. Without self-knowledge we...

Valerie van Mulukom, Coventry University Almost everyone has something they fear – maybe it’s spiders, enclosed spaces, or heights. When we encounter these “threats,” our hearts might begin to race, or our hands may become sweaty. This is called a threat fear response, and it exists to help us avoid potential pain. Most of us only feel scared when a threat is present. But when the threat fear response happens even when a threat isn’t present, it can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), phobias, or anxiety. These disorders may often be treated using exposure therapy, but a new study found that something as simple as using your imagination can help people overcome fear. Overcoming fear Many fear-related disorders are treated using exposure therapy . This helps people “unlearn” a threat fear response by breaking the association between the “trigger” (an image or sound that causes the threat fear response) and harmful consequences of the threat, by presenting patient...

Tamsin Newlove-Delgado, University of Exeter One in four young women aged 17-19 have a mental disorder, according to the latest figures from the NHS, and one in five have anxiety or depression, or both. For all children and young people aged five to 19, the new data shows that one in eight has a mental disorder. The figures come from a survey led by NHS Digital. The team, of which we were a part, surveyed more than 9,000 children and young people across England and their parents. Where parents agreed, teachers were asked to complete questionnaires about the child. Clinical “raters” used this information to decide whether children were classified as having a mental disorder, using internationally agreed criteria. This system means that the information is more complete, accurate and rounded than many mental health surveys. Working in the dark We have waited a long time for these figures. The last national survey took place in 2004 and was published in 2005 . Since then,...

Chantal Gautier, University of Westminster   From the playground to parliament , bullying exists everywhere. In fact, a recent report into bullying in the UK’s parliament revealed just how serious this problem is, urging behavioural change among MPs. But why is bullying so widespread and difficult to tackle? Part of the problem is that bullies sometimes don’t even realise that they are bullies. For example, bullying managers may easily justify upsetting certain employees by telling themselves that they are only pushing them to be their best. Or they may be nice to the people they bully at times, and only remember those instances. They may even think that people who break down as a result of their behaviour are not strong enough to work in the profession in question. But how do you know you are actually bullying someone rather than just dealing with an overly sensitive person? Academics still disagree about how bullying should be conceptualised and defined. The first...

Simon McCarthy-Jones, Trinity College Dublin They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom! This often parodied quote from Mel Gibson’s William Wallace in the film Braveheart is something of a contradiction, and yet its sentiment is easy to understand. Nothing gets our hackles up more than being told that we have no choice over something. The powerful urge we get to regain a lost or threatened freedom, even at great cost, is formally called “ reactance ”. I call it the “Braveheart effect”. This effect is likely to kick in if we are told we must do something or that we can’t do something. It can be triggered by being told our personality or gender means we will necessarily act in a certain way. Anything that makes us feel our freedom is threatened awakens powerful forces. Anger wells up. We mentally rail against whatever or whoever threatens our freedom. What we have been pushed into tastes bitter. What...

Michael Smith, Northumbria University, Newcastle   Writing about positive emotions may help to reduce stress and anxiety, according to our new study , published in the British Journal of Health Psychology. Earlier research has also found that writing about negative emotions – getting things “off your chest” – can improve your mental health . And it seems to benefit physical health, too. Stress affects your physical health, so it is thought that improvements in mental well-being might stop people becoming physically unwell. Research has shown that writing about negative emotions can lead to fewer visits to the doctor , fewer self-reported symptoms of ill health , and less time off work due to ill health . Not many studies have investigated writing about positive emotions, but if writing about negative emotions helps people deal with their negative thoughts and feelings, then it’s possible that focusing on positive emotions might have a positive effect on people’s me...

Liza Morton, Strathclyde University   One in every 125 babies is born with a heart condition – but thanks to modern medicine more infants are surviving than ever before. In the developed world, 90% will now live into adulthood, compared with just 20% in the 1940s . However, there is no cure for these conditions and the person needs lifelong medical monitoring . Congenital heart disease (CHD) doesn’t just affect the body – it affects the mind, too. A growing body of evidence shows that people with CHD are more likely to suffer from mental health problems, such as anxiety , depression and post-traumatic stress disorder . To date, this psychological impact has been understood as a consequence of the additional stressors that living with a serious lifelong medical condition can bring, such as missed schooling, spending lots of time in hospital (from childhood), and having to undergo frequent surgery. I know from personal experience how challenging this journey can...

   Thusha Rajendran, Heriot-Watt University The UK is experiencing a new renaissance. The first Renaissance looked back to the Classical world of ancient Rome and Greece . It bridged the historical divide from the Middle Ages to modern history (at least from a European perspective). Yet we find ourselves in a still newer modern “age of technology” in which robotics , gene editing and other once-unthinkable realities are defining our existence. To navigate and thrive in this new world, we need the new da Vincis and Michelangelos . We need individuals who are both scientist and artist: the creative visionaries. Instead, we are producing the very opposite. Leonardo da Vinci was the quintessential Renaissance figure – a man of art and science. Shutterstock Young people are still being taught how to become exam-passing machines, rather than develop their ingenuity. They sp...