Negative attributes can produce positive results

A new research has found the power in seeing the "silver lining" of negative personality traits.

New York University researchers' study establishes a novel 'silver lining theory: negative attributes can produce positive results.'

Lead author said that people know that a weakness can also be a strength, but these results show that if people actually believe it, they can use these beliefs to their advantage.

The researchers conducted a series of experiments in order to assess the impact of these "silver lining" beliefs and in an initial study, subjects filled out a survey that assessed their personalities by asking the extent to which negative traits they believed they held could also be seen as positive (e.g., conceited vs. high self-esteem).

The majority of individuals endorsed a silver lining theory: when prompted with a negative attribute, most participants readily generated a positive associated trait.

In a second experiment, with a new set of subjects, the researchers focused on the specific silver lining theory that impulsivity is related to creativity and notably, more than half of participants in a pilot survey saw a connection between "impulsivity" (negative) and "creativity" (positive).

However, in order to ensure the randomness of the study samples, two sets of groups were told they were "impulsive" and two other groups were told they were "not impulsive."

Their results showed that the impulsive group that read the story linking impulsivity to creativity came up with significantly more creative uses for the object than did the impulsive group that read the story disproving this relationship.

Notably, in the non-impulsive groups, the results were the opposite, those who read the story refuting the connection with creativity came up with more uses for the object than did those who read the story establishing this linkage, though this was not significant.

The study appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.