Progress-focused

Depression can be tough. But psychologists speak of a phenomenon called depressive realism . They often say that depressed people are more realistic in their assessment of their personal and social world than non-depressed people. Non-depressed people would think unrealistically optimistic about themselves and their circumstances.  This idea has also become familiar to many non-psychologists. It seemed a kind of consolation: while depression is very annoying, at least on the other hand, depressed people are more realistic. Is it true? Amelia Dev and colleagues investigated it. 

  Mindset is about more than learning and performing. A new paper by Seo, et al. (2020) shows how the relationship between a fixed mindset and internalizing symptoms (such as depression) comes about.

When we feel bad, it makes sense to search for things that may make us feel better, and rather sooner than later. But be careful. Some things which are practically sure to make us feel better in the short term may have detrimental effects in the longer term. One example might be the use of antidepressants. They might work in the short term but might have unpleasant side effects in the longer term. But there is another example which may be a little less obvious: fantasizing about something positive. The thought is logical: "When you feel down, fantasize about how your life might become wonderful. That will make you feel better!"

There are different types of ways to deal with mental problems such as depression. Three such ways are: (1) taking medication, (2) going into therapy, and (3) helping yourself to solve it. A lot of research has been done into the efficacy of (1) and (2). Less research has been done into (3). There is a non-cynical interpretation of this but also a more cynical interpretation. I don't know which interpretation is more valid. There may be truth in both of them.

Neuroscientist Alex Korb has written an interesting book about depression called The upward spiral . A core idea in his book is that depression is not simply a state in which you feel badly but rather a downward spiral. What he means by this is that while you feel depressed you are inclined to do things which do not relieve your depression but maintain or aggravate it. Things such as physical activity, social contact, and thinking about happy memories, among other things, might help but are precisely the type of things which you are not inclined to do when you feel depressed. Because of this, it is easy to get stuck in a depressed mood.

As you may know , how we think about our own qualities has a big impact on how we feel, how we behave, how we learn and how we perform. Thinking our abilities (such as our intelligence) are fixed (this is called a fixed mindset) makes us less challenge seeking and less persistent and also more defensive. Also our performance is lower over time. A growth mindset, thinking that our qualities can be developed through effort, leads to more challenge seeking, persistence, openness, learning and performance over time. Thinking about others' qualities as fixed also has consequences such as being quicker to stereotype and label people, to be less open to new information about people, and to punish them quicker when they have done something wrong. In a chapter in a new book , Carol Dweck mentions two lesser known finding with respect to mindsets.