Critical Thinking Monologue

Summary:

The article is about negative thinking and different techniques to help prevent thinking negative. Arimitsu & Hoffmann (2017) stated that “When people make a mistake, they tend to judge themselves negatively and experience negative emotions, such as anxiety, shame, guilt, or regret” (p.160). Strict parents, bullies, rejection, or failing in a person’s early life can cause these negative emotions to be a health behavior as the child grows up to be an adult.

The reason for this article is to figure out which different techniques have a better impact on stopping or decreasing negative thinking. It is to also help people learn how to overpower the negative with the positive. Negativity has a way of controlling our life and stops us from

doing what we want to do because of past events. With this study, Arimitsu and Hofmann are trying to take a negative past event and find a technique of approaching the event to change the negativity into positivity. By doing that, people will be able to let go of the past and move on, never regret anything, never feel ashamed of themselves, and stop being depressed or anger about a situation.
The authors randomly assigned 225 participants that were recruited from psychology classes at different universities, and divided them into 5 different groups: compassionate thinking, cognitive reappraisal, responsibility reattribution, self-deflection, or control. First, everyone was given a task to remember a self-criticizing event from their past and answer questions about the emotions and thoughts they had at that time. Then, each group had different sets of tasked depending on the group they were in. If they were in the compassion thinking group, they were first told to “accept your emotions” (Arimitsu & Hoffmann, 2017, p.162). Second thing they were told were to “understand why you feel this way” (Arimitsu & Hoffmann, 2017, p.162). Third was to “recognize what you did” (Arimitsu & Hoffmann, 2017, p.162). Fourth was to “see your goodness” (Arimitsu & Hoffmann, 2017, p.162). Lastly, they were told to “cultivate positive emotion” (Arimitsu & Hoffmann, 2017, p.162). In the cognitive reappraisal group, they were told to “Please focus on rational thinking instead of judging yourself” (Arimitsu & Hoffmann, 2017, p.162). In the responsibility reattribution group, they were to make a list of people that were involved in the event and give them a percentage that reflects how responsible they were in the event. After all that makes a pie chart and rethink your self-critical thoughts (Arimitsu & Hoffmann, 2017, p.162). In the Self-deflection group, they were told to “Write down your positive characteristics, fullered by a paragraph explaining how what happened was not entirely your fault” (Arimitsu & Hoffmann, 2017, p.163). Lastly, the control group had no instructions given to them. At the end of all the instructions given and followed, all groups were given the same set of questions to answer to see if they see the past event differently. The authors results showed that out of the 5 different techniques, compassionate thinking and cognitive reappraisal showed the most improvement of decreasing negative emotion. In conclusion, “Even though only very short-term effects of the different interventions were previously studied, compassionate thinking was more effective than other emotion regulation strategies in reducing negative emotions after a recalled self-critical event” (Arimitsu & Hoffmann, 2017, p.166)
Professional critique:
The article was written well and it was easy to understand the material.

The intended audience would have an easy time reading the content and understanding the study conducted. The authors were very detailed in every procedure that they did and made sure that the readers know what each group was doing. To improve this article, there should be more explanation of how compassionate thinking had the best effect on negative emotion. Arimitsu & Hoffmann (2017) stated the instruction of what the compassionate group had to do and is all about accepting the event and not to believe that what was done was wrong, but in the conclusion and in the discussion, is does not give us a true explanation of why this group had the best results. Other than that, the authors conclusion was supported and there was not bias apparent in the authors’

work.
Personal response:
This article was very interesting to me because negative thinking is a health behavior that is hard for me to change.

Negative thinking has damaged certain relationships, stopped me from reaching goals, and doubt myself in everything that I do. I could be a better person, athlete, and student if I had a more positive mindset. By reading this article, it has shown me different techniques on how to approach different situations and events in a positive way. In the study, compassionate thinking has the greatest results with reducing negative emotions. Compassionate thinking is just flipping the way you think about a situation. It is to not judge yourself, to understand what you have gone through in the past to make you think a certain way in the present, to acknowledge the positive things you have done, to see the good in what has been done, and to know that you can do anything. The authors did a great job addressing the major problem and finding ways to decease the health

behavior.