Difficulties are claimed to contain a corresponding benefit available to those who look for it.
Peale's positive-thinking movement made this a general doctrine. The tractable version is that reappraisal changes emotional response, which is well supported; the doctrine's version asserts something about the problems rather than about the appraiser, and has the same defect as any claim that cannot be wrong.
In practice
- A team told to find the opportunity in a failure produces a list, and the list would have been produced for any failure.
- A bereavement described as an opportunity has been described, not analysed.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation offered is that difficulties contain benefits available to those who look. The tractable version is reappraisal, which changes emotional response to an event without changing the event.
- In its favour
- Reappraisal is well supported, and research on benefit-finding documents that people do report growth after adversity, which is the phenomenon the doctrine points at.
- Against it
- As stated it cannot be tested, since any outcome can be described afterwards as the opportunity the difficulty contained, and the research measures what people report rather than what problems contain.
- Standing
- Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. As stated it cannot be tested, since any outcome can be described afterwards as the opportunity the difficulty contained. Research on benefit-finding and post-traumatic growth documents that people report this, which is a claim about reporting rather than about problems.
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- Moralists, aphorists and the self-help tradition