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Negative persona (mask) inhibits learning

‘To be negative’ is not the same as ‘to be critical’.

The dictionary has many definitions for this word, “critical, but I would choose the critical (decisive) meaning, as regarding learning, to be—exercising or involving careful judgment or judicious evaluation.

A negative persona is an attitude of non-acceptance.

I think that part of the problem is that too many of us have only an accept button and a reject button.

Accept or reject are not the only options one has. The most important and generally overlooked, especially by the young, is the option to ‘hold’.

It appears to me that many young people consider that ‘to be negative is to be cool’. This leads them into responding that ‘X’ is false when responding to an OP that states that ‘X’ is true.

When a person takes a public position affirming or denying the truth of ‘Y’ they are often locking themselves into a difficult position. If their original position was based on opinion rather than judgment their ego will not easily allow them to change position once they have studied and analyzed ‘Y’.

The moral of this story is that holding a default position of ‘reject or accept’, when we are ignorant, is not smart because our ego will fight any attempt to modify the opinion with a later judgment. Silence, or questions directed at comprehending the matter under consideration, is the smart decision for everyone’s default position.

Our options are reject, accept, and hold. I claim that ‘hold’ is the most important and should be the most often used because everyone is ignorant of almost everything.

Do you accept, reject, or hold judgment regarding my claim?

Here's a summary of a recent paper on negativity bias:Consumers were presented with information about a new product and allowed to independently form their evaluations. As would be normally expected with many products, some of these evaluations were positive and others negative. The researchers then revealed to participants whether their peers evaluated the product negatively or positively. They found that the opinions of others exert especially strong influence on individual attitudes when these opinions are negative. Additionally, consumers that privately held positive attitudes toward the product were more susceptible to influence from group opinion than those who initially held negative opinions.

Adam Duhachek, Shuoyang Zhang, and Shanker Krishnan, "Anticipated Group Interaction: Coping with Valence Asymmetries in Attitude Shift." Journal of Consumer Research: October 2007.

It suggests that a discussion forum is more likely, given an stated position in the original post, to settle against the proposition than to side with it. Merely accruing evidence relating to the decision isn't itself sufficient to bring a reasonable outcome.

Goodness knows I'm the least opinionated poster on the site but I find it difficult to continually (and accurately) say "I don't know but here's some facts to help make a decision" when everyone around me is pushing their feelings rather than exposing the conclusions of their reasoning and how they reached them.

There's a radio abridgement of Katherine Whitehorn's autobiography this week, she came up with a pithy aphorism that's appropriate: ""I am all for people having their heart in the right place; but the right place for a heart is not inside the head."

She had another gem - not that I want to distract focus from your question but you might like it: "Outside every thin girl is a fat man, trying to get in" - that just works on so many levels.

Spot

I think you have made a good point. People are heavily influenced by others and especially that seems to be true on these Internet forums. I think many people tend to follow the leader.

Yeah unforunately im a follower and not a leader.....Do have my own mind but can be easily swayed, especially by a husband who is ALWAYS right:-5...

I dont like to offend so would usually abstain from negativity

Chezzie;723635 wrote: Yeah unforunately im a follower and not a leader.....Do have my own mind but can be easily swayed, especially by a husband who is ALWAYS right:-5...



I dont like to offend so would usually abstain from negativity




That is exactly how I am.

Especially the husband part. You have one of thoes too?:D