Negativism

Negativism is an attitude towards a person, people, and sometimes to life and the world as a whole with a negative prejudice. The opposite of negativism is understanding, cooperation, support.

Most often, negativism means behavioral negativism — the tendency to refuse or do everything in defiance, to do the opposite, contrary to requests and requirements. Passive negativism — ignoring requests and demands. Active negativism (protest behavior) — a person does the opposite, no matter what he is asked.

Negativism in children: “You stayed too long. Go for a walk!” “I don’t want to, I’m reading!” “You haven’t read today. It’s time to start reading!» “I don’t want to, I’ll go for a walk!” — while, most likely, his desires will be directly opposite to the proposed one.

tivism is more typical for children during age crises. It is typical for adolescents (teenage negativism) and for older (old) people (see the Emotional Tone Scale and Age Negativism about this). Negativism usually escalates during periods of personal failure.

The tendency to object is one of the manifestations of negativism, and it can be used. A teenage girl masters high heel shoes. “Is it hard for you to walk in such high heels?” — Naturally, she will object: «No, it’s fine!» — Well, it’s good, I gave myself the correct operational suggestion.

When negativism is associated with general poor health or mood, it is more often of a total nature, manifesting itself in behavior, communication style, and outlook on life. In other cases, perhaps due to the peculiarities of upbringing, negativism can be very selective. For example, in words a person swears, objects and accuses, but in reality at the same time he loves and cares. On the contrary, a polite and well-mannered person with a completely positive vocabulary can actually be an asocial person with negative misanthropic attitudes.

Negativism can manifest itself in relation to certain people or a group of people. For example, it seems to a person that in this society his individuality is suppressed, and then he tries to do everything “not like others”. It is difficult for a negative person to live on his own, it is even more difficult to live next to him. It is difficult to do business with a person if a person has a negative worldview — the habit of seeing the negative in life: mistakes — not success, problems — not opportunities, shortcomings — not virtues. However, negative people may well be friends with each other, together pouring mud on those around them. Often they also speak ill of each other, but since it is customary for them to see negativity in the world, nasty things addressed to them are quite understandable for them. They are used to it.

It is more difficult to notice a deep negativism in a person. It happens that outwardly, seemingly positively relating to people, inside he treats people with a negative prejudice, not trusting people, seeing intent and sabotage, blaming and suspecting people, provoking negativism among others.

The reasons for negativism are varied, and one cannot deny genetic circumstances, the influence of the hormonal background, and the general cultural environment. Unfortunately, negativism is one of the characteristic features of the Russian mentality. In this regard, most Russians more often see themselves as shortcomings rather than virtues.

For u.e.zhom, if a person on the street accidentally hit another person, the stereotyped reaction of almost anyone: “Sorry”, an apology and a smile. They are so brought up. It is sad that in Russia such patterns are more negative, here you can hear “Well, where are you looking?”, And something more harsh.

As for the psychological reasons, this is primarily 1) helplessness, lack of skills and knowledge of how to cope with the problem; 2) struggle for power, self-affirmation; 3) lack of attention, attracting attention; 4) expression of hostility, revenge. Sometimes this is a painful variant of a negative worldview.

How to deal with negativity?

Fighting negativism is a creative task. Pointing out the symptoms of negativism in others is dangerous, usually people with developing negativism react defensively to this, only strengthening themselves in their negativism. If you take care of yourself or ask others around you to tell you when you «fall into negativism», success is quite real.

How can you avoid falling into negativity? — It is not very wise to fight negativism, because the fight against is already a manifestation of negativism. It is more productive and more fun to develop a positive outlook and a positive attitude towards people. This is real. So, we remove the position of the Victim, the tendency to whine (whining is not only crying and feeling sorry for yourself, it is any kind of complaints, reproaches, contrition, etc. A whiner, as a rule, irritates others and drives himself into anguish) and worry “Ah how terrible everything is!”, we develop the position of the Author, self-confidence and the habit of vigorous support of others. We learn to see our successes and good luck, we learn to compliment people, we learn to thank people and we learn gratitude for life in general.

Attentive people take care that negativism does not take hold of them. The easiest way is to ask friends and family members to follow you, especially since such a game is useful for everyone. You can independently track your positive vocabulary and separately write out your typical expressions in which you splash out your negativity. Math, of course, is excluded from normal communication.