Feeling good about the future? Hold that thought

Looking on the bright side of life could cause unhappiness in the long term, new research suggests.

The findings suggest positive fantasies about how future events will turn out can boost your mood in the here and now, but they may actually lead to increased depressive symptoms in the long run.

This is because you set yourself up for disappointment and when your future doesn’t live up to your fantasies, it can cause you to become depressed.

Elsewhere, unrealistic wishful thinking, while making us feel good for a while, does nothing to tackle the causes of unhappiness, said the authors.

Students who felt better during tests after being asked to think positively ended up putting in less work into their college courses, and suffered worse grades, the study found.

Meanwhile, those who feared the worst ended up working harder.

Lead researcher Professor Gabriele Oettingen, said: ‘Our findings suggest that as pleasurable and helpful as positive fantasies are for depressive mood in the moment, they can be problematic and cumbersome over time.’

In a series of four studies, Professor Oettingen and colleagues found that the more positively participants fantasised about the future, the fewer depressive symptoms they showed at that moment but the more symptoms they showed at a follow-up session.

Professor Oettingen said further experimental research would be needed to determine whether there is a direct causal link between positive fantasies and depressive symptoms in the long term.

But the findings suggest that positive fantasies are a risk factor for depressed mood over time.

Source: daily mail

N.H.Kh