[lit-ideas] Re: Seligman 'positivity' test
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:22:27 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Fri, 12/9/08, carolkir@xxxxxxxxx <carolkir@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Date: Friday, 12 September, 2008, 12:00 AM
> Even more important, though, is the voter's sense of
> linking to the
> favored candidate--being on the side of the winner.
I v. much tend to agree. This is more important. Especially in the context of
the floating voter who proves decisive at election time. [Is it the same
psychological appeal as backing the right horse?]
> Seligman's work is grounded in
> self-fulfilling
> prophecy (here transferred to the media), the bandwagon
> phenomenon,
> and basic conditioned learning.
Yes and no.
There is the well-known 'placebo effect', and this might be regarded as a form
of self-fulfilling prophecy. Seligman's 'positivitity' is rather different: it
is more about using a cognitive approach but one strongly tempered with realism
(in this it admits that realism often produces a depressive outlook - as per
research - but he seeks a kind of workable compromise between realism and a
'positive mental outlook', and is - rightly - suspicious of a 'PMO' that lacks
realism).
Seligman attacks "basic conditioned learning" and uses work by Garcia as a
refutation. However, from a Poppn. POV, he mangles his discussion and fails to
draw sufficiently radical conclusions from that work - iow he does exhihibit
remnants of the "basic conditioned learning" POV even as he asserts this has
been empirically overturned. This is no surprise, perhaps. There are people on
this list who would never regard themselves as positivist, and indeed are well
past all that, yet the remnants of positivistic/trad.empiricism thinking are
still an infrastructure to their thinking.
Best,
Donal
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
