Too much negative speech pushes people away. In politics, negative smear campaigns lead to voter (or more accurately nonvoter) apathy. The current negativity is so pervasive that less than 50% of eligible voters make it to the polls (forgive my negligence for not looking up this well-known statistical trend--it's probably worse!). Negativity can also lead people to vote for the opposing side. Likewise, in religion, too much rules-based scrupulosity pushes people away from church. I read a Pew poll about five years ago that found the average length of stay in Evangelical Christianity is five years. For most Evangelical Christians--simultaneously the fastest growing and fastest shrinking religious group--they may be initially attracted to the "God is love" sentimentality and the structure of an external adherence to religious norms and rules, but over time they sour to moral pressure and expectations. The children of Evangelical Christians seldom continue in the Faith, almost as badly as the children of modern Catholics. Overall, whether in politics or religion, negativity is an alienating force that repels people.
The popular solution to the problem of excessive negativity is to espouse 100% positive speech. This approach seems to make sense, and I think most people wish this approach were more prevalent among both politicians and clergy. They wish that politicians would take the moral high ground and avoid mud-slinging at their opponents. They also hope that ministers would focus entirely on the love of God and avoid controversial topics. Such a 100% positive reinforcement approach was even espoused by B.F. Skinner (1948) in Walden Two, who likened his understanding of operant-conditioning to Christ's message of love. But is such a 100% positive message more idealistic than practical? And does it work?
The short answer is that trying to be 100% positive is too idealistic, impractical, and ineffective. As much as people hate them, negative political campaigns win races. Likewise, a judicious amount of fire and brimstone can fill the pews or the revival. In recent years, working in the criminal justice system, I have been well-acquainted with multiple individuals who have run for local office. In every case, the individuals who refused to go negative lost. They lost in spite of each of their candidates having glaring negatives. The trouble was that, though people who worked in the system knew the real story, the county voters did not. Each of these candidates had an easy lob and they could have slammed their opponents. But they took the moral high ground. And lost. Likewise, from that same Pew survey, the churches that espoused the 100% positive approach of inclusion, unconditional forgiveness, beyond Heaven and Hell, and social justice were hemorrhaging parishioners or congregants.
The same Pew survey showed that Evangelical churches were the most dynamic, with people coming and going at the highest levels. By contrast, mainline Protestant (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and so forth) as well as post-Vatican II Catholic Churches were experiencing an exodus from the pews with no new arrivals (with the possible exception of Catholic immigrants). The 100% positive message seemed to only have staying power with the elderly, who either continued to attend from force of habit or who experienced the afterlife as a more pressing problem. For those of us with two feet still above the dirt, the purely positive message may sound appealing, but it is not realistic, practical, or effective.
The problem of positivity and negativity has perplexed me for more than two decades. I first became acutely conscious of it in group counseling and church-groups. I observed an expectation that interactions were supposed to be 100% positive. These excessively positive group members viewed any criticism as "controversial." At the same time, I noticed that groups that were relatively free of controversy were stagnant or dwindling. Meanwhile, groups with a fair amount of controversy were vibrant and growing. Yet, it was also clear that groups that were excessively negative would quickly fail. A former Philosophy major, I pondered this phenomenon at length. Clearly, the goal was to achieve a balance between positive and negative speech. The 100% positive espousal represented something like an over-simplified understanding of Christian ethics. It's a lot harder to be consistently positive than negative, and since most people will fall short of the mark, the goal is to strive for 100% positivity. By contrast, the Greek philosophers tended to focus more on a balance, "nothing in excess." In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discussed ethical decisions as a balance between extremes, in which one pole was typically easier than the other. I think Aristotle would surely admit that it is more difficult to be positive, but the goal would be to achieve a balance between positive and negative. But what is the balance? How much positive and how much negative speech is most efficacious?
This past year, I ran across an article by Kendall, Howard, and Hays (1989) that I felt provided a provisional answer. As a recently graduated, I am no longer a student, and I no longer have access to the full article. So I have to go by the abstract and from memory. Kendall et al. (1989) were cognitive therapists concerned with the balance of positive and negative thinking. They administered a test that measured positive or negative self-referent speech to three groups: depressed, overly optimistic, and normal. Not surprisingly, they found that the depressed group reported the most self-critical speech, the overly optimist group was the least self-critical, and the normal group was somewhere in between. I should say something about what the researchers might have meant by overly optimistic. Seligman (1990) talked about the importance of optimism and the dangers of too much optimism in his book Learned Optimism. Basically, Seligman's point was that certain occupations, especially sales, required a high degree of optimism lest the person become overwhelmed by the preponderance of failure. Like a professional baseball player who bats 300 (very good), the salesman may fail to get on base 70% of the time or more. Optimism--or in this case positive self-referent talk--would be essential for staying the course. But Seligman (1990) also found that people with too much optimism were also prone to questionable moral decisions. At the extreme, think of the bank robber who never believes he will get caught, or the young people who try Heroin thinking they are impervious to addiction. Again, clearly there is a balance between optimism and pessimism. Kendall et al (1989) provided a provisional answer that the balance is 62% positive to 38% negative, or a 1.6 to 1.0 ratio. Again, I'm going partly by memory, but it seems to me they also cited athletes, and the highest achievers attained this 62% to 38% ratio. In other words, if you are an Olympic figure skater, it behooves you to be positive most of the time as you will encounter set-backs, bad rounds, and difficulties. But the goal of being 100% positive would also be counterproductive. To perform at a higher level, one must also be accurately self-critical in order to improve performance. To me, this 62% positive and 38% negative ratio was a watershed idea.
If you take the 62/38 rule and apply it to political speech, it also makes sense. Seligman (1989) found that optimism was a strong predictor of success in political races. People are attracted to optimistic candidates. However, we also know from observation that negative campaigns work and purely positive campaigns do not. Politicians spend a lot of money on polls and marketing firms. If negative ads did not work, do you really think they would run them?
Think of this problem like an English teacher. If I write an essay and tell you exactly what I want to say, but I do not clarify what I am not saying, then my essay might be confusing. For example, if I say I like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, you might just assume I like country music. Conversely, if I tell you that I am NOT saying this and NOT saying that, you might ask, "Exactly what ARE you saying?" To follow up with the previous example, if I say that I don't like Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley, you might ask, "Well, what DO you like?" However, if I say that I don't like Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley, but I do like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, then you have a pretty good idea that I only like classic country music. The point is to find a balance and talk more about what one is saying and not as much about what one is not saying. The 62/38 rule likely applies to good writing.
Part of the frustration with the current debate over politics is that it seems so negative. And as a result, I am hearing lots of people yearning for a purely positive approach. I agree that such an approach may sound good. I also concur that there is a real contemporary problem with negative speech. But the desire for 100% positive politics is naive. Refusing to go negative, especially when there is an real issue worth informing the voters about, is not an effective way to run a campaign.
The same 62/38 rule applies to religion. Overall, people want a religious faith that is internal and positive, but they also yearn for external structure and rule compliance. In other words, if God is all forgiving and everyone goes to Heaven, then what's the point? I might as well live however I feel like living. People turn to religion for structure and moral norms. People yearn for external compliance with the letter of the Law. Though external compliance with the Law is only 38% of the equation, it is still a vital part of the formula. Without the concept of sin, religion becomes superfluous. The external compliance to the Law complements the internal relationship with God. Otherwise, all that is left is a religion that is like a warm sweater; it provides comfort, but it does not substantially change the way one lives. Again, such a positive religion might provide comfort for the aged, especially if church attendance has been a part of their lives. But the warm sweater religion is hardly attractive to others, especially not the children of such churchgoers. Their children see right through the vacuity of the 100% positive approach to religion, just as much as they might be repelled by an overly negative approach to religion.
They say the two topics to avoid in polite conversation are politics and religion. They probably have a point. But the two things that interest me the most are politics and religion. Perhaps the problem is not talking about politics or religion per sae, but talking in too negative or maybe too positive a manner, speaking in an unbalanced way. I must admit, I find obsequious religious talk to be almost as annoying as judgment and condemnation. Likewise, I sometimes find the 100% positive approach to politics to be insulting to my political convictions. I am sometimes even annoyed by the Pollyanna condescension toward people whose views I otherwise oppose. At least the opposite side of the isle has convictions.
And so on...
At this point, I have a confession to make: I have no idea how to end this essay. I think you get the point. I'll leave it at that. Thanks for reading.
References
available upon request (I'm not writing for college credit)
