What Is Positive Psychology?

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Praise can enhance motivation, optimism, and self-esteem in recipients.

Positive comments often yield better results than criticism, especially in writing and teaching.

Encouraging positivity doesn’t mean ignoring genuine feelings or challenges.

Relatively recent research shows that both gratitude and hope have positive effects on the human body as well as the mind and soul. I’ve read that gratitude has neurological benefits, and hope can improve symptoms and daily functioning in those with chronic illness. I’d like to add my own modest, personally observed contribution to the positive psychology discussion: What about positive talking?

I’m convinced that positive talking (i.e., praising) can have all sorts of personal benefits for the people on the receiving end, including creating motivation and contributing to optimism and self-esteem. And I’m also convinced that criticizing or telling people what they’re doing wrong or should do differently can have a negative effect.

I first noticed the benefits of positive talking (i.e., the power of praise) while teaching writing classes. I’ve learned that praise actually gets better results than critiquing, that people will respond to praise by writing better in the hope and expectation of getting more praise. If you tell someone they look good in a shirt, they’ll wear it every day. And if you tell someone a shirt looks bad on them, they’ll put it away in the closet and never take it out again. This statement is the foundation of how I teach writing.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with critiquing in writing workshops; I’m just saying it doesn’t work very well. Because when you tell someone they don’t look good in a certain piece of writing, they’ll put it away in the desk and never look at it again. Maybe not literally—lots of people try to mend the piece, try to fix their stories according to the advice of the teacher and their fellow students. And maybe the story does look better... although not always. Sometimes it comes out worse.

Either way, what gets put away in the desk drawer isn’t necessarily the particular piece of writing. It’s the writer’s confidence, their excitement and enthusiasm, their impulse to keep writing. And without that, the writing itself often shrinks, sometimes down to nothing.

I’ve expanded this teaching method to other parts of my life. I’ve learned that we’re all a lot more like children than we care to admit, that we long for someone to praise us. I know I do.

It’s a little embarrassing admitting that or asking people to praise you, and usually I don’t, although I have started asking people to say something positive whenever I share my writing. Mostly, though, I’ve started praising people in general, not just my writing students, pointing out what I like about them or what I think they’re doing right. People really respond to that.

It’s a small act of kindness that doesn’t cost anything at all; it’s just as easy to say something positive as it is to say nothing or something negative. And even when your praise doesn’t appear to sink in—if the recipient brushes it off or insists that something negative is true—the good thing you’ve told them stays inside them in some way anyway. I believe that, and I’ve found it to be true with myself.

What Is Positive Psychology?

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I don’t want to appear to be some kind of Pollyanna, to make everyone queasy with insistent, jolly, half-sincere comments. And I’m certainly not urging anyone to pretend to be positive when they’re not. It seems to me that positivity has a somewhat negative reputation, maybe because that’s what people associate it with—others telling you to stuff your feelings, pretend to be happy when you’re not.

I have noticed that over the years I’ve become less interested in criticizing, complaining, and focusing on what’s wrong, although sometimes I’ll pretend to be more negative than I am just to go along. Even saying that sounds a little negative.

I’ve also found that what I’ve learned about the power of praising has vast implications across the board. You can picture something positive and build on it, however small or inconsequential it seems. It’s a real thing, something that appears above the baseline, whereas a negative is below zero and basically nothing.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe anything positive is true or possible in the face of bad things happening, or, more often, bad things that could happen. Fear is like a bully that commands all the attention, and I’ve certainly fallen prey to tons of fear. Maybe all we can do is make ourselves talk to fear, distract its attention by telling it something positive that’s happening in the moment.

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