Haters gonna hate

Diabetes lurks within...   (Public Domain)

You all know them.  They're the next-door neighbors who catch you with their litanies of complaints as you're carrying a load of groceries from the car to the front door.

Today it's one thing, tomorrow it will be another.  Call them Negative Nellies or call them Debbie Downers - but one thing is certain:  haters gonna hate.

Is there no hope?  Scientific American's report on a recent study from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology doesn't hold out much. This study, done by Justin Hepler and Dolores Albarracin, indicates that those who focus upon the skin cancer within sunshine and the diabetes within lollipops will tend to be negative about pretty much everything.

Psychology, being the fancy discipline that it has become, of course has a fancy term to describe this woeful phenomenon:  "negative dispositional attitude."

Optimists, however, have found a silver lining even within these gloomy clouds. They point out that marketing to Negative Nellies could be predictably easy. All you would have to do is emphasize the negative aspects of your competitor's products, and soon these naysayers will be eating out of your manipulative hands.   

Resources

http://news.yahoo.com/see-every-glass-mostly-empty-184208170.html

Copyright September 17, 2013 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved