‘Declinism’
I first encountered this term “declinism” in the British newspaper The Guardian. The term was used to refer to the predisposition of many people to look at the past favorably and to see the present and the future as a decline—economic, political, social, cultural—from that golden past.
Biological psychologist Pete Etchells wrote the article, summarizing research into this phenomenon, which might be one of the many psychological biases—tricks of the mind—that can have adverse effects. Objective studies of history will show that the quality of life has improved for most of the world’s population, even the poor. Life expectancy is higher, and the elderly who do reach old age tend to be healthier than the previous generations’ elderly.
The Guardian article notes that violence is also declining, something I know is hard to believe given all the news about terrorism and war. But again, objectively, the horrors of the two world wars have not been repeated on such a large scale. What happens though is mass media highlight violence, even of individuals, and give a sense that we are enveloped in bloodbaths.
The psychologists’ concern with declinism comes with the misery it causes, especially for older people.
For years now, psychologists have recognized that people may be “naturally” optimistic or pessimistic, and I am sure you can categorize yourself, and your friends here. There are the Pollyana types who are eternally optimistic, seeing good in everything and always anticipating better times. And then there are the pessimists, who almost seem to gain happiness by being miserable—they endlessly complain about everything.
Not surprisingly, the negativity bias tends to be more pronounced in people with depression.
Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky has written extensively about this optimists/pessimists phenomenon, noting that humans are not programmed for long bouts of happiness. Note how the high we feel after being applauded for a speech or an award wears off very quickly. This has been attributed to biology, almost a mechanism to protect us from being too optimistic or happy.
Yet there may also be people who, when happy, are quicker to become unhappy, almost like their thermostat for happiness is set lower. With such people, just a bit of happiness is enough to trigger a kind of thermostat that makes the person switch off that positive mood and move into complaining and whining.
Canine optimists?
I was titillated by a study conducted a few years back that claims even dogs can be born optimists or pessimists. There was an elaborate experimental design involved, placing food bowls at the far end of a room and observing how dogs of two differing personalities responded to the food bowls. Yes, you should try this at home if you have several dogs with different personalities.
Dogs that tended to get anxious when owners are away—the ones who bark constantly, the ones who pee or defecate all over the house (this refers to male dogs who do this to mark their territory)—tended to be less willing to cross the room to the food bowls, a behavior which was interpreted as “pessimism,” i.e., such dogs did not want to take the effort to check the food bowls because they were probably thinking, oh, there was nothing in those bowls.
Shades of the glass of water allegory and optimists seeing it as a glass that is half-full and pessimists saying it is half-empty.
I’ve sometimes wondered if journalism and the mass media—old and new—attract these pessimists in larger numbers, and if this translates to extreme negativity in media reporting (and social media postings). This negativity can be terribly infectious. Given positive and negative views about an event—e.g., a new product or a politician’s statement—people seem to be drawn to the negative, sharing it widely.
No doubt, positive, optimistic news has its following too, especially the kind that tugs at your heart strings, making you cry and feel better after that good cry; still, bad news and negative, even nasty social media postings, seem to stand a stronger chance of going viral.
In the workplace, pessimists can destroy group morale as they go around spreading their negativity. They can see no good in anything, so people lose the motivation to excel, or to try to change a bad situation.
Multiply this many times over and we might say that even entire nations may lean toward being more optimistic or pessimistic, with far reaching consequences. Stock markets, the investment climate, are shaped by a collective of national optimism or pessimism.
The elder
Declinism is a more specific predisposition with a time frame, and researchers are especially interested in looking at how the elderly manifest declinism. The Guardian article summarizes studies popular in the late 20th century (meaning the late 1980s and early 1990s) and found that the elderly tend to best remember events that happened to them
between the ages of 10 and 30, but generally have a weaker memory of events that occurred between the ages of 30 and 60, and then get to again remember more events that occur as they get closer to the 70s.
Moreover, the elderly, at least in one study, seem to experience fewer negative emotions, and tend to remember more positive things. If we combine the studies on remembering across one’s lifetime, it would seem then that people are more likely to remember positive events between the ages of 10 and 30.
What happens next depends on the personality, the “declinists” tending to see everything that has happened since the time they were aged 10 to 30 as going downhill.
I suspect the elderly themselves tend to select friends similar to themselves, so some end up being the best of friends doing nothing but talk about how the world has declined, while others constantly extol progress and better times.
I tend to be an optimist, and believe that the world would be better off if we had less of declinism and declinists.
(I sometimes think the term “dismalism” is more appropriate, where people wallow in their despair.)
Much has been said about Filipinos being the happiest people on the planet, and yet we are a complaining nation, constantly whining and whimpering about things getting worse. I think a problem, too is we have low trust levels, with strong suspicions about the world, and people.
Perhaps it’s time we had collective therapy, recruiting historians to give a more positive view of the past and the present, and dispelling the myth of a golden age. If we could think more positively, we just might be able to move forward into the future with more confidence and trust.
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