Posted on 12/20/2006 6:42:43 AM PST by shrinkermd
One of the most daunting and widely repeated insights from recent social research holds, in essence, that your marriage is doomed if you and your spouse can’t muster up five positive interactions for every negative one...
...People don’t generally get pleasure from their central heating, for instance. But they notice when it doesn’t work. Or as Arthur Schopenhauer, the 19th-century German philosopher, put it, “We feel pain, but not painlessness....”
...It is, in fact, our biological nature to accentuate the negative, to dwell on the one cutting remark rather than the three or four sweet nothings. We differentiate between negative and positive events in just a 10th of a second, and the negative ones grab our attention. For instance, when researchers show test subjects a paper with a grid of smiley faces on it and one angry face, the subjects instantly zero in on the angry face. Reverse the pattern, and it takes them a little longer to pick out the solitary smile. Likewise when a boss makes four positive comments in an employee review, and one quibble, the subordinate almost invariably fixates on the quibble...
(Excerpt) Read more at happydays.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Same thing they do in their marriages and then wonder why they are so miserable either married or divorced.
Of course they face the biological consequences of being negative for the following reasons:
...It is, in fact, our biological nature to accentuate the negative, to dwell on the one cutting remark rather than the three or four sweet nothings. We differentiate between negative and positive events in just a 10th of a second, and the negative ones grab our attention. For instance, when researchers show test subjects a paper with a grid of smiley faces on it and one angry face, the subjects instantly zero in on the angry face. Reverse the pattern, and it takes them a little longer to pick out the solitary smile. Likewise when a boss makes four positive comments in an employee review, and one quibble, the subordinate almost invariably fixates on the quibble...
The author concludes with:
"...So it starts to look like a basic primate need: To cultivate good relationships, you need to ease the innate animal skittishness of the people around you and provide them with a sense of safety, comfort and reciprocity. This is not perhaps such a startling revelation. And it is unlikely to produce an epidemic of Scrooge-like seasonal epiphanies. But for me, there is something compelling about the idea that being nice is a biological imperative, and not just sentimental humbug. Five good deeds before breakfast still seems like a bit much. But when I grunt at my wife these days, I am striving to sound less like a hungry predator...
Another very fine blog by the NYT. I am sure the big money still goes to the bitchers and whiners--Dowd and Rich--but maybe they should read this blog and take it to heart.
After 13 years in the army and 1 year in Afghanistan recently, I can tell you that I appreciate my toilet, my heating system, my cooling system, my refrigerator and my wife EVERY DAY!
The article suggests eventually you will take everything for granted except your wife. Thanks for serving your country in time of war and welcome home!
Nah - by that time I will have gotten the "itch" again and volunteered for another deployment...
James Dobson had a guest on who said it was 10 positive comments must be made in order to counteract 1 negative comment. The 5 to 1 ratio which the NYT holds dear may very well be at the core of their problems. Along with a great deal of insincerity which can be translated as contempt...
2banana
thank you for reminding me.
I also still appreciate my heating, toilet, and...
my silverware.
30 years later!
[vietnam "era" vet sent to Korea in jungle fatigues]
MRE's today come with their own silverware (the MRE spoon).
bump
that's pretty much the premise of every Dr.Harley or Gary Chapman book.
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