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Of Babies and Bathwater: A Reply to Coyne and Tennen’s Views on Positive Psychology and Health

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Annals of Behavioral Medicine

Abstract

Purpose

We disagree with several conclusions reached by Coyne and Tennen, as well as their interpretation of specific findings.

Results

First, we dispute that researchers have advanced the claim that positive thinking can cure disease. Second, we question their exclusive focus on cancer-related mortality, when strong cumulative evidence suggests that optimism is related to positive health outcomes for other major diseases, and that psychosocial interventions may improve other important cancer outcomes, such as reduced pain and increased quality of life. Third, we disagree sharply with their assessment of the literature on posttraumatic growth and the implications of the research they cite.

Conclusion

It is premature to abandon efforts to understand and promote positive phenomena among people with various life-threatening illnesses. Instead, well-validated measures of positive phenomena should become routinely incorporated into a broader array of health psychology studies to provide a rigorous test of their role in human health and adaptation to disease.

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Notes

  1. We share Coyne and Tennen’s concern with methodological issues in the study of psychosocial factors in the etiology and progression of cancer and other diseases. We were therefore surprised to see them cite the “unanticipated results” from another recent publication from the Women’s Health Initiative [4] that “low social support and high life stress seemed to protect against the development of breast cancer.” Our confidence in these results is limited for several reasons. The interaction between life events (quintiles) and social support (median split) was marginally significant in a huge sample, and was described in the original article as being completely attenuated after the addition of breast cancer risk factors to the predictive model. Most importantly, when continuous measures of social support were used, the interaction of social support and life events was nonsignificant as a predictor of breast cancer incidence. Thus, the interaction between life events and social support in this study seems not to be reliable. We suggest that the same methodological standards be applied as vigorously to research findings that refute the link between psychosocial factors and cancer incidence as to those that support it.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Utah, 380 South 1530 East, Room 502, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112-0251, USA

    Lisa G. Aspinwall Ph.D.

  2. Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, 28223, USA

    Richard G. Tedeschi Ph.D.

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  1. Lisa G. Aspinwall Ph.D.
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  2. Richard G. Tedeschi Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Lisa G. Aspinwall Ph.D..

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Aspinwall, L.G., Tedeschi, R.G. Of Babies and Bathwater: A Reply to Coyne and Tennen’s Views on Positive Psychology and Health. ann. behav. med. 39, 27–34 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-010-9155-y

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