Is Positive Thinking Good?

This being my 1st post in this blog, I want to start on the issue of "positive thinking."

Positive thinking can be applied to many ways of our lives. Imagine now going to the mall, and you wish to park next to the entrance. You tell yourself, think positive "I found a parking spot next to the entrance." And you find it. Happy.

What if you apply to gambling? "I won." Will you always win?

Having lost in the game, surely you want to win back. And many gamblers who have lost, yet having the feeling of "one more game" continue on. Are they really thinking positive or simply addicted to gambling.

According to a study done by a professor from a university in Australia states that gamblers who are positive thinkers, who do not focus on their loses but their wins both actual and "foreseeable" end up spending a lot more than what they wanted.

In the research, 300 games were played by volunteers. Presets were made without the knowledge of the volunteers that, they each will experience 1 big win, 1 big loss, 298 small wins or losses.

Group A - First big win then big loss then small wins or losses.
Group B - First big loss then small wins or losses then big win.
Group C - First small wins or losses then big win then big loss.
Group D - First big loss then small wins or losses then big win.

After all 300 games were played, the researchers conducted an interview on the gamblers perceptions on their own positive way of thinking towards the games and their personal wins or looses.

In general, most gamblers lost sight of their losses and focused only on their winnings, even if they were small. Of course, if the winnings were closer together, the gamblers perceived with more ease the "positiveness" of their winnings and forgot more easily of their losses.

Overall, the study results shows that human behavior is fairly simple. We mainly focus only on the positive side of things as a method of coping with the negative side of life. And this applies to how we gamble too.

This positiveness of perceiving gambling can cause with much ease that gamblers continue to play a gambling game even when their losses and reason should tell them to stop. Thus, it is understandable that the human mind prefers the positive to the negative when it suits it.