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Whining, griping, and complaining: Positivity in the negativity
Author(s) -
Kowalski Robin M.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/jclp.10095
Subject(s) - psychology , virtue , positive psychology , negativity effect , interpersonal communication , interpersonal relationship , social psychology , focus (optics) , scope (computer science) , epistemology , philosophy , physics , computer science , optics , programming language
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the positive psychology movement. The emphasis of positive psychology is on human virtue rather than on human vice, on human strength rather than human frailty. In an effort to focus on what is good about human nature, however, the positive psychology movement has neglected to examine the redeeming features of seemingly aversive behaviors. Thus, the purpose of the present article is to broaden the scope of positive psychology by examining, in addition to its negative facets, the positive features of one particular aversive behavior, complaining. After defining complaining, we address the personal, relational, interpersonal, and material benefits of complaining to show that there is, indeed, positivity in the negativity. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 58: 1023–1035, 2002.