> Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is a core symptom of a number of common psychological disorders and may be a modifiable process shared by many psychological risk factors that contribute to the development of cognitive impairment.
The core assumption (or insight?) of Cognitive Therapy (and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is that our thoughts shape the way we feel. In this model, repetitive negative thoughts are actually a main cause of depression, not a symptom.
If you're interested in this approach, I'd recommend the works of David Burns, for example his book "Feeling Great" or the Feeling Good Podcast.
This can surely be corrected with the happiness laser.
Jokes aside, it should be noted that CBT might confuse cause and effect and the goal is to mold the behavior of people into something socially wanted or expected or just learn to live with something that cannot reasonably be changed.
> and the goal is to mold the behavior of people into something socially wanted or expected or just learn to live with something that cannot reasonably be changed.
There are lots of crackpot approaches to psychotherapy, but I do believe that most therapists genuinely want to help patients/clients to recover, not just mold them into something socially accepted.
> In this model, repetitive negative thoughts are actually a main cause of depression, not a symptom.
Wouldn‘t it be both? While the repeated negative thoughts are the cause, they‘re also the symptom how it show up and the reason why people seek out a diagnosis
I came here to say: read this book, it's really great.
I think if your depression is very deeply buried, it surely isn't enough to read it, but still it can open up quit some insights regarding the connection of what you think and how you feel. It makes it visible.
There can also be other causes for depression is course.
While studying and testing the exercises described in the book I discovered one other thing I'd like to share: to me it seems, to come out of a reappearing mental dip, you need to be very consistent in your efforts (mental / physical exercises and other habits you try to establish or change, to feel better). Anyone else?
I've had little success with multiple CBT therapists as it's basically "have you tried not feeling bad" with extra steps.
"Things are only as bad as we perceive them to be" leading up to "have you tried reframing that and finding something positive in it", and "have you tried not thinking about that".
If I need dissociation and self-delusion, there are substances that are a far more impactful option.
I'm glad I'm not alone in this. They tried to say it was my " engineer brain" making me miserable.... But as a super autistic adult...the only comfort in this world is objective math and scientific truths.
I'm not seeing where they are coming up with RNT as a cause, other than a lot of theory. Wouldn't it be a symptom of cognitive decline instead? Dementia patients, particularly those with Alzheimers, tend to become depressed because of confusion and memory loss. Wouldn't it be more likely that these depression symptoms are being caused by deteriotating brain function rather than the other way around?
Of course. It would be bizarre if there weren't a relationship between Lewy Body dementia, Alzheimer's, or vascular dementia (which in old people, means you've gone into heart failure) and repetitive negative thoughts. For one, you know you've got an incurable disease that will inevitably destroy your mind, and you've become one of the rare class of people for which assisted suicide has almost no controversy, it's something you're putting down payments on. For two, you can't finish thoughts.
My father was just diagnosed with Parkinson's a few months ago, and he already has trouble following any conversation, and knows it. If that didn't lead to depression, that's what would be notable. And any insight that he reaches that gives him comfort might be gone an hour later.
The first thing that jumps out at me is the concept of perseveration (repeated fixed obsessions) that happens in dementia syndromes. It would be interesting to consider whether this is a chicken-or-egg scenario, whether individuals tended to ruminate in earlier life.
I believe there have been other studies showing people with a history of depression develop dementia at higher rates. There are some that have shown the structural/signal changes that happen after longterm depression as well. These are things that occur years or decades before the dementia.
I saw this with a family member. In their 60s, they started getting stuck on small worries and always assumed the worst. At first it just seemed like anxiety, but over time their memory and focus started slipping too. It was like their mind got stuck in a loop.
What helped the most wasn’t medicine. It was little things, like going for walks together or having simple conversations. Just giving the brain something new to pay attention to seemed to make a real difference.
Another little thing you can try: music from their childhood / youth.
Just yesterday I randomly came across a song we often heard in our shared apartment during University, and immediately I had 10 different memories from that time swirling around in my head.
This is in my family too. One person always had a tendency of being overly worried and after children moved out and social life thinned or a bit, this became more prevalent.
After years of trying to push that person towards trying out new things and enriching their life, I kind of gave up. You simply cannot convince someone about a medicine if they don't feel there is a problem. Still it's hard to see believing the person could be enjoying life more, especially during their retirement.
I don't have any hard evidence but being fed polarizing, click bait-y headlines that drive engagement through emotion certainly don't help. Fear is drummed up in a relative of mine from the headlines for articles (that they doom scroll past and don't read).
I already knew my best friend from childhood was a terminal cynical bastard.
But now this! He has less time than I thought. I will have to forward it to him, and cross my fingers that he doesn't spiral. Thoughts and prayers, man. Before you suggest it, I can't tell him to just "think positive". He would physically explode. Implode? Something. Matter, antimatter.
To be honest, I don't think that line ever helped someone who sees himself in the middle of deep shit. There is nothing positive about being in shit.
The only thing that can help people stuck in such a mindset is somehow change their perspective. And yes, maybe that study will help in a way.
usually cynicism is a coping mechanism for underlying/subconscious pain... If you resolve that, then there is room for happier/positive thoughts to emerge. However, it's just like any other addiction (alcohol), it's not resolved in a day and takes hard work.
Much more comfortable to think; (everything sucks, those in power are out to get me) than (wow I really had a high hope for what my life would be, and this sure isn't it).
Beta is dimensionless, in terms of standard deviations. In their results tables, you can find their unit versions under the column "B". These lie in the centers of the CIs, as expected.
Anecdotally: Happy people seem to like to talk about anything and everything. Unhappy people don't like to talk or only talk about one thing.
I just got inspired on an llm prompt, and got these three koans, that to me are the most amazing things I've been able to get out of llms so far:
https://pastebin.com/tc9uMWuw
I wonder if this is how daydreaming helps, especially as a kid. I think that being taught not to dream as much as an adult and being in the moment kind of removes this random focus in our brains
I have a personal theory (I'm sure it's not a novel one and it probably has a name) that human brains are naturally predisposed to negative thought than positive thought because our brains are essentially evolved prediction engines. And because it is often easier and faster to lose something than gain it (e.g. it is usually less urgent to act on the signs of deer you might want to hunt and eat, than the sign of a tiger who might want to hunt and eat you), our prediction engines have a bias toward negative prediction. Conscious awareness of this fact (or rather, theory) has helped me curb negative thoughts at least to some extent.
I know that traumatized human brains tend toward negativity. I don't believe it is a natural human condition, though. With trauma, the instincts you mentioned start applying to the wrong situations - trauma rewires the brain. "Minor" trauma, sustained trauma, traumatic events, can all contribute to this.
I don‘t think negativity necessarily has something to do with trauma. Negativity bias is very widespread, regardless of previous trauma. Basically everybody flies at negativity.
Bad and shocking headlines click way better than positive ones, negative feedback is occupying our attention more than positive feedback, we perceive losses way more important than gains, we perceive losses as way more impactful than gains of the same degree, etc.
I am 100% sure trauma can and does affect the negativity aspect of our thinking in a big way. But I do not think that negative thinking overtopping positive thinking is limited to trauma sufferers
This is likely a byproduct of us being too comfortable now. Not in the "you've got nothing real to worry about!" boomer rethoric kind of way, but in the sense that our baseline for reward has shifted a bit higher. So trauma can still present a very strong negative RL signal, while positive RL signals of similar magnitude become rarer.
Negative statements also garner more attention from the tribe. This is why a lot of special interest groups are constantly carping about what they're against rather than what they're for.
Evolutionary psychology just-so stories can justify anything as long as the premise that the organism will survive better in some defined local optimum is preserved.
I agree with this to a large extent. All prediction comes with uncertainty and a good survival strategy is to align towards the upper bound on risk and lower bound on reward.
People forget that nature only optimizes for sexual reproduction and that’s pretty much it
In this case for example, it doesn’t really give a shit about your psychological well being or shaving years off your life because of some negative thought pattern
If being on your toes, anxious, paranoid, and always looking over your shoulder keeps you alive and making babies - then as far as the developer that nature is, it’s a feature not a bug
> People forget that nature only optimizes for sexual reproduction and that’s pretty much it
Common misunderstanding.
Evolution optimizes for system success. Not individual gene propagation. Genomes are not agents with individual goals.
Many species, but especially social animals, have numerous behaviors and traits designed to prompt communal success rather than individual survival and reproduction
It seems to be an established fact that humans are loss averse, and feel the pain of a loss more than the pleasure of a gain. This seems to make sense from an evolutionary point of view - taking a risk to gain something, at the expense of losing something already in hand, seems generally maladaptive (perhaps moreso when you are old and frail, and less resilient to loss).
Perhaps this translates into a tendency to dwell on the negatives of a situation rather than the potential benefits?
OTOH the human mind seems to fail in common ways when old age and dementia sets in, perhaps with no benefit, so this may just be one of those things. Old people tend to have bad joints. News at 11.
First of all if negative thinking is associated with cognitive decline and if what you say is also generally true then humans will also be pretty much, in general, be in cognitive decline.
Humans all being generally in a state of cognitive decline doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary perspective because natural selection will weed out degraded cognitive performance. So most people won’t be in this state. Anecdotally, you likely don’t see all your friends in cognitive decline so likely most of them don’t have a negative bias.
So your conclusion is likely to not be true. In fact I’m being generous here. Your conclusion is startling and obviously wrong both from a scientific perspective and an anecdotal one.
In fact the logic from this experiment and additionally many many other psychological studies points to the opposite. Humans naturally have a positive bias for things. People lie to themselves to stay sane.
Anecdotally what I observed is people don’t like to be told they are wrong. They don’t like to be told they are fat and overweight slobs. Additionally stupid people by all objective standards exist but practically every culture on earth has rules about directly calling someone a dumbass even if it’s the truth.
Like this is not a minor thing if I violate these positive cognitive biases with hard truths it will indeed cause a visceral and possibly violent reaction from most people who want to maintain that positive cognitive bias.
For example racial equality. Black people in America are in general taller and stronger than say Asians. It’s a general truth. You can’t deny this. Strength and height has an obvious genetic basis putting equality from a physical standpoint to be untrue. It is objective reality that genetics makes Asians weaker and smaller than black people in America.
So genetics effects things like size between races, it even effects things like size between species… black people are bigger than mouses. But you know what else? it affects intelligence between species. So mice genetically are less intelligent than black people and also black people are genetically more intelligent than fish. So what am I getting at here?
Genetics affects hair color, physicality, height, skin color between races. Genetics also effects intelligence between species (you are more intelligent than a squirrel) but by some black magic this narrow area of intelligence between races say Asians and black people… it doesn’t exist. Does this make sense to you? Is this logical? Genetics changes literally everything between species and races but it just tip toes around intelligence leaving it completely equal? Is all intelligence really just from the environment when everything else isn’t?
I mean at the very least the logic points to something that can be debated and discussed but this is not an open topic because it violates our cognitive biases.
Some of you are thinking you’re above it. Like you see what I’m getting at and you think you can escape the positive bias. I assure you that you can’t escape it, likely you’re only able to escape it because you’re not black. If you were black there’s no way what I said is acceptable.
But I’m Asian. How come I can accept the fact that I’m shorter and weaker than black people? Maybe it’s because height is too obvious of a metric that we can’t escape it and intelligence isn’t as obvious in the sense that I can’t just look at someone and know how smart he is.
But let’s avoid the off topic tangent here about racial intelligence and get back to my point. I know this post will be attacked but this was not my intention. I need to trigger a visceral reaction in order for people to realize how powerful positive cognitive bias is. That’s my point. It is frighteningly powerful and it’s also frighteningly evident but mass delusion causes us to be blind to it. Seriously don’t start a debate on racial intelligence. Stick to the point: positive cognitive bias.
Humans as a species that viscerally and violently bias in the cognitively positive direction.
Parent poster could not be more wrong. We are delusional and we lie to ourselves to shield ourselves from the horrors of the real world. It is so powerful that we will resort to attacks and even violence to maintain our cognitively positive delusions.
There are studies on separated Black twins that ended up in different socioeconomic situations. They limit the genetic difference in variation of IQ between races to just a few points.
And to be clear, IQ itself is very much inheritable. But the _variation_ in IQ in a population is not explained by genetics.
There’s not much evidence of rigorous differences in intelligence across racial groups that could not be explained by environmental and cultural differences. Statistical analysis generally suggests that if there is one, the effect size is small.
The current observed gap is much smaller than gains than have been observed within racial communities over time as a result of environmental changes.
So… no. You don’t have a lot of credible evidence for what you claim is a delusion to doubt. And even the observed effect size disregarding confounding effects is less than individual variation.
> RNT was assessed using the perseverative thinking questionnaire (PTQ). The scale consists of 15 items covering three domains: core characteristics of RNT, unproductiveness, and psychological capacity captured. Each item is rated on a 5-point Likert scale from 0 “never” to 4 “almost always”, with a total score ranging from 0 to 60.
Can someone who works in this field explain to me how this study is anything other than evidence of one exam being a proxy for another?
The "Repetitive Negative Thinking" is then just, like, a marketing term for their questionnaire?
I don't see the questionnaire itself in the study (maybe I'm missing it?). Without understanding what questions were answered in a questionnaire, how am I supposed to take anything away from this study?
Readit News
The core assumption (or insight?) of Cognitive Therapy (and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is that our thoughts shape the way we feel. In this model, repetitive negative thoughts are actually a main cause of depression, not a symptom.
If you're interested in this approach, I'd recommend the works of David Burns, for example his book "Feeling Great" or the Feeling Good Podcast.
Jokes aside, it should be noted that CBT might confuse cause and effect and the goal is to mold the behavior of people into something socially wanted or expected or just learn to live with something that cannot reasonably be changed.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/feeling-good/202503/... explicitly discusses the arrow of causality here
> and the goal is to mold the behavior of people into something socially wanted or expected or just learn to live with something that cannot reasonably be changed.
There are lots of crackpot approaches to psychotherapy, but I do believe that most therapists genuinely want to help patients/clients to recover, not just mold them into something socially accepted.
Wouldn‘t it be both? While the repeated negative thoughts are the cause, they‘re also the symptom how it show up and the reason why people seek out a diagnosis
I think if your depression is very deeply buried, it surely isn't enough to read it, but still it can open up quit some insights regarding the connection of what you think and how you feel. It makes it visible.
There can also be other causes for depression is course.
While studying and testing the exercises described in the book I discovered one other thing I'd like to share: to me it seems, to come out of a reappearing mental dip, you need to be very consistent in your efforts (mental / physical exercises and other habits you try to establish or change, to feel better). Anyone else?
"Things are only as bad as we perceive them to be" leading up to "have you tried reframing that and finding something positive in it", and "have you tried not thinking about that".
If I need dissociation and self-delusion, there are substances that are a far more impactful option.
My father was just diagnosed with Parkinson's a few months ago, and he already has trouble following any conversation, and knows it. If that didn't lead to depression, that's what would be notable. And any insight that he reaches that gives him comfort might be gone an hour later.
It just seems like a silly study.
When really it's "We've found an interesting association, and we are going to explore it more to see if there's an causation that we can influence"
Deleted Comment
What helped the most wasn’t medicine. It was little things, like going for walks together or having simple conversations. Just giving the brain something new to pay attention to seemed to make a real difference.
Just yesterday I randomly came across a song we often heard in our shared apartment during University, and immediately I had 10 different memories from that time swirling around in my head.
After years of trying to push that person towards trying out new things and enriching their life, I kind of gave up. You simply cannot convince someone about a medicine if they don't feel there is a problem. Still it's hard to see believing the person could be enjoying life more, especially during their retirement.
This can be very sad. The person you love just fades away.
But now this! He has less time than I thought. I will have to forward it to him, and cross my fingers that he doesn't spiral. Thoughts and prayers, man. Before you suggest it, I can't tell him to just "think positive". He would physically explode. Implode? Something. Matter, antimatter.
To be honest, I don't think that line ever helped someone who sees himself in the middle of deep shit. There is nothing positive about being in shit. The only thing that can help people stuck in such a mindset is somehow change their perspective. And yes, maybe that study will help in a way.
Much more comfortable to think; (everything sucks, those in power are out to get me) than (wow I really had a high hope for what my life would be, and this sure isn't it).
This seems wrong. If "β" is the estimate here (not sure), it should be inside the confidence interval, but is way outside...
I just got inspired on an llm prompt, and got these three koans, that to me are the most amazing things I've been able to get out of llms so far: https://pastebin.com/tc9uMWuw
Thank you for the set up.
Bad and shocking headlines click way better than positive ones, negative feedback is occupying our attention more than positive feedback, we perceive losses way more important than gains, we perceive losses as way more impactful than gains of the same degree, etc.
I am 100% sure trauma can and does affect the negativity aspect of our thinking in a big way. But I do not think that negative thinking overtopping positive thinking is limited to trauma sufferers
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
And things that add to entropy are favored by nature, undoing human labor & endeavor. Related?
People forget that nature only optimizes for sexual reproduction and that’s pretty much it
In this case for example, it doesn’t really give a shit about your psychological well being or shaving years off your life because of some negative thought pattern
If being on your toes, anxious, paranoid, and always looking over your shoulder keeps you alive and making babies - then as far as the developer that nature is, it’s a feature not a bug
Common misunderstanding.
Evolution optimizes for system success. Not individual gene propagation. Genomes are not agents with individual goals.
Many species, but especially social animals, have numerous behaviors and traits designed to prompt communal success rather than individual survival and reproduction
Perhaps this translates into a tendency to dwell on the negatives of a situation rather than the potential benefits?
OTOH the human mind seems to fail in common ways when old age and dementia sets in, perhaps with no benefit, so this may just be one of those things. Old people tend to have bad joints. News at 11.
Humans all being generally in a state of cognitive decline doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary perspective because natural selection will weed out degraded cognitive performance. So most people won’t be in this state. Anecdotally, you likely don’t see all your friends in cognitive decline so likely most of them don’t have a negative bias.
So your conclusion is likely to not be true. In fact I’m being generous here. Your conclusion is startling and obviously wrong both from a scientific perspective and an anecdotal one.
In fact the logic from this experiment and additionally many many other psychological studies points to the opposite. Humans naturally have a positive bias for things. People lie to themselves to stay sane.
Anecdotally what I observed is people don’t like to be told they are wrong. They don’t like to be told they are fat and overweight slobs. Additionally stupid people by all objective standards exist but practically every culture on earth has rules about directly calling someone a dumbass even if it’s the truth.
Like this is not a minor thing if I violate these positive cognitive biases with hard truths it will indeed cause a visceral and possibly violent reaction from most people who want to maintain that positive cognitive bias.
For example racial equality. Black people in America are in general taller and stronger than say Asians. It’s a general truth. You can’t deny this. Strength and height has an obvious genetic basis putting equality from a physical standpoint to be untrue. It is objective reality that genetics makes Asians weaker and smaller than black people in America.
So genetics effects things like size between races, it even effects things like size between species… black people are bigger than mouses. But you know what else? it affects intelligence between species. So mice genetically are less intelligent than black people and also black people are genetically more intelligent than fish. So what am I getting at here?
Genetics affects hair color, physicality, height, skin color between races. Genetics also effects intelligence between species (you are more intelligent than a squirrel) but by some black magic this narrow area of intelligence between races say Asians and black people… it doesn’t exist. Does this make sense to you? Is this logical? Genetics changes literally everything between species and races but it just tip toes around intelligence leaving it completely equal? Is all intelligence really just from the environment when everything else isn’t?
I mean at the very least the logic points to something that can be debated and discussed but this is not an open topic because it violates our cognitive biases.
Some of you are thinking you’re above it. Like you see what I’m getting at and you think you can escape the positive bias. I assure you that you can’t escape it, likely you’re only able to escape it because you’re not black. If you were black there’s no way what I said is acceptable.
But I’m Asian. How come I can accept the fact that I’m shorter and weaker than black people? Maybe it’s because height is too obvious of a metric that we can’t escape it and intelligence isn’t as obvious in the sense that I can’t just look at someone and know how smart he is.
But let’s avoid the off topic tangent here about racial intelligence and get back to my point. I know this post will be attacked but this was not my intention. I need to trigger a visceral reaction in order for people to realize how powerful positive cognitive bias is. That’s my point. It is frighteningly powerful and it’s also frighteningly evident but mass delusion causes us to be blind to it. Seriously don’t start a debate on racial intelligence. Stick to the point: positive cognitive bias.
Humans as a species that viscerally and violently bias in the cognitively positive direction.
Parent poster could not be more wrong. We are delusional and we lie to ourselves to shield ourselves from the horrors of the real world. It is so powerful that we will resort to attacks and even violence to maintain our cognitively positive delusions.
And to be clear, IQ itself is very much inheritable. But the _variation_ in IQ in a population is not explained by genetics.
The current observed gap is much smaller than gains than have been observed within racial communities over time as a result of environmental changes.
So… no. You don’t have a lot of credible evidence for what you claim is a delusion to doubt. And even the observed effect size disregarding confounding effects is less than individual variation.
Deleted Comment
Just another fundamental asymmetry in existence.
Can someone who works in this field explain to me how this study is anything other than evidence of one exam being a proxy for another?
The "Repetitive Negative Thinking" is then just, like, a marketing term for their questionnaire?
I don't see the questionnaire itself in the study (maybe I'm missing it?). Without understanding what questions were answered in a questionnaire, how am I supposed to take anything away from this study?