ScienceDaily: Negative self-perception appears to self-perpetuate

“The experiment is based on the mnemic neglect paradigm, which describes how people selectively forget negative information about themselves. People with psychological disorders, such as depression, are less likely to exhibit mnemic neglect and are more likely to remember the negative information. According to Matsumoto, people who already view themselves negatively are more likely to remember and incorporate negative feedback because it aligns with their already-established self-perception. This is more deeply enforced by cognitive reactivity, Matsumoto said, since people with negative self-schema are also more likely to take even minor negative information more personally.

From the simulations, the researchers found that when people with high cognitive reactivity experienced some negative events in early life, negative self-schema developed and strengthened -- even if they experienced many positive events later in life.

"These findings suggest why some individuals develop mental illnesses even in good environments," Matsumoto said, noting that longitudinal studies are needed to compare how well the simulations match to real life. "Altering the way people encode and integrate events into self-schema may enable the prevention and treatment of mental illness.""

Some Insights From This Article

• Our brains are constantly selecting which memories that are being recalled and also constantly changing your mental paradigm to adapt to your circumstances. If you had something great happen to you one day (got into your dream school, aced a test, or just had a great day in general) your brain will generally perceive the world in such a lens.

• This is the reason why sometimes people with mental health problems like depression will feed into their own negative schema as their brain will continuously recall memories that are particularly sad and view your current situation as more negative than it really is.

• Learning to alter rigid patterns of thinking can involve truly learning to reverse this process. Identify when your mind is stuck in this feedback loop of perpetuation and attempt to reverse it with various self-care strategies and mindfulness. Of course easier said than done, this whole idea of alterring thinking has birthed a whole field of psychology of CBT (cognitive based therapy) which aims to address these maladaptive ways of thinking.

What are some ways in which you have successfully been able to overcome a negative mindset?

Full article is here!

#Mindset #Perpetuation #Depression