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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 "This is interesting work, because what it's really saying is that once you are primed with this idea that you're going to die, it sets off this automatic network," said Todd Kashdan, an expert in the psychology of positive emotions and an assistant professor of psychology at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va.
The findings suggest that, in the face of death, "I'm going to grab onto something that I know I can hang on to. It's not going to be negative things, I can't really hold on to that," Kashdan said. "So, I'm going to focus on these positive things."
"These things are happening below the level of awareness," he added.
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The new findings dovetail with much of the research on how people survive -- and even thrive -- after some of life's most difficult events. In fact, people's tendency to think sunny thoughts actually increases with age and with their proximity to the end of life, DeWall said.
"As people grow older, they become more focused on positive emotions," he said.
There's one exception to that rule, however: Clinically depressed individuals tend not to think positively when confronted with the idea of death, suggesting that their psychological immune system may have gone off-track, DeWall said.
In contrast, the minds of healthy, non-depressed people typically balance darker imaginings with more hopeful images, he said.
Kashdan stressed that the Kentucky experiments focused on the very short-term, however. Coping over the longer term may be much tougher, he said.
"What's going to happen to these people -- not over the next few minutes but rather the next two weeks, six months? Do they end up reorganizing or shifting their life projects? There's research to show that for some people, it does, and for some people, it doesn't," he said.
More information
For more on positive psychology, visit the University of Pennsylvania.
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