Inside Colin's Head

On the other hand, positive emotions broaden the scope of the visual field, leading to increased breadth of attention; this new study shows that positive moods do so by directly modulating the visual system so that we can gain access to to more information. In psychology, the broaden-and build theory holds that positive emotions enhance one's awareness, and that this global perspective encourages novel thoughts and actions. This broadened behavioural repertoire in turn leads to increased creativity and inventiveness.

Summary: a positive and optimistic worldview literally enhances our perception.

This makes sense to me. To me, negative emotions are beneficial to our brains when something is really wrong; these emotions infiltrate all of our thinking and force us to deal with a problem. When we're not dealing with an emergency, those emotions can really limit and skew our perception. Could spending a lot of time in this negative space create a new emotional calibration that then expects negativity as the norm? Could this be an explanation for how people are capable of lying to themselves while not being mindfully aware?

Optimism, and as I've before qualified many times on this blog, specifically realistic optimism, creates a perspective that's based on possibilities. The realistic optimist is overtly aware that negative stimuli are a constant of life and chooses to blaze onward anyway.

As an example, it's easy to see the modern world we live in as terrifyingly fragile. It isn't hard to find stories of oppression, hate, and challenged liberties. There are also amazing things being done around the world every second in the name of art, humanity, and science. Those topics can't compete in headline fashion, but they are actually more ubiquitous in this world. We should be angry reading those hateful stories, but I think we can do more to change the world by participating and applying energy to the positive movements that exist every day.