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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Critical positivity ratio | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_positivity_ratio | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:18:23.760203+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Follow-up from Brown, Sokal, and Friedman === The original rebuttal authors were openly critical about Fredrickson's partial retraction, and American Psychologist published their response to it in 2014, where they emphatically argued that there was no evidence whatsoever, as of that date, for the existence of a critical positivity ratio (i.e., a tipping-point for positivity). In 2014, the rebuttal authors also responded to comments from others on their 2013 work,
noting Nickerson's concurrence regarding the lack of empirical evidence for a critical positivity ratio, and lauding her distinction between the within-person and within-time types of theories, noting that "[b]oth types of theories are valuable... but... conceptually distinct and by no means equivalent" and that they believed that "this distinction deserves to be more widely discussed in the literature on research methods". noting that Hämäläinen, Luoma, and Saarinen "concede our main point, namely the complete lack of justification for the use of the Lorenz equations in modeling the time evolution of human emotions", but confronting the "no clear mathematical errors" assertion, stating thatAmong the purely mathematical errors clearly noted... are Fredrickson and Losada's assertion that the r = 22 data (alleged to be characteristic of “medium-performance teams”) end up in a limit cycle... and their implicit claims concerning the absence of chaotic attraction at large values of r... But we are happy to agree with Hämäläinen et al. that the central flaws in Fredrickson and Losada (2005) and its predecessor articles are logical and conceptual, not narrowly mathematical. And they are, as we have demonstrated, overwhelming. The original rebuttal authors conclude this salvo by lamenting that the "unbridled romanticism" of which humanist psychology has been accused has not been replaced with a rigorous evidence-based psychology—as Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi promised in their founding manifesto of positive psychology—rather, the widespread acceptance of the critical positivity ratio shows that positive psychology has betrayed this promise, stating that "the sin is now romantic scientism rather than pure romanticism is not, in our view, a great advance."
== J. Humanist. Psychol. special issue, and other follow-up ==
As of January 2014, as Andrew Anthony notes from his preparation for his article in The Observer from that period, Fredrickson continued to maintain "on empirical grounds" that "tipping points [in relation to positive emotions and flourishing] are highly probable", as communicated to him via email. In 2018, the Journal of Humanistic Psychology published a special issue focused on the aftermath to the rebuttal of the original Fredrickson and Losada article, where Harris L. Friedman and Nicholas J. L. Brown served as monitoring editors. As of this date, the 2005 report of Fredrickson and Losada has been described as discredited.
== Popular discussion ==
The concept of a critical positivity ratio advanced by Fredrickson and Losada in 2005 was embraced by the lay public. Prior to the appearance of the Brown-Sokal-Friedman rebuttal and the ensuing retraction, Fredrickson had written a popular book, Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the 3-to-1 Positivity Ratio that Will Change Your life. Andrew Anthony, writing for The Guardian in January 2014, noted that in it, Fredrickson had written, "Just as zero degrees Celsius is a special number in thermodynamics, the 3-to-1 positivity ratio may well be a magic number in human psychology." Anthony also noted that following the Brown-Sokal-Friedman rebuttal, Fredrickson has "removed the critical chapter that outlines Losada's input from further editions of Positivity", and that she has largely avoided engaging the popular press. Reporting from a variety of sources, including The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Scientist, the fact that the problems with the critical positivity ratio paper and concept went unnoticed for years (despite widespread adulatory publicity) contributed to a public perception of social psychology being a field that lacks scientific soundness and rigorous critical thinking. Sokal would state that the paper's "main claim... is so implausible on its face that some red flags ought to have been raised", as would only happen broadly with graduate student Brown's initiating the collaboration that resulted in the Brown-Sokal-Friedman rebuttal.
== References ==
== Further reading ==
=== Scholarly sources === Losada, M. (1999). "The Complex Dynamics of High Performance Teams". Math. Comput. Model. 30 (9–10): 179–192. doi:10.1016/S0895-7177(99)00189-2. Losada, M.; Heaphy, E. (2004). "The Role of Positivity and Connectivity in the Performance of Business Teams: A Nonlinear Dynamics Model" (PDF). Am. Behav. Sci. 47 (6): 740–765. doi:10.1177/0002764203260208. S2CID 54020643. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-06-02. Retrieved February 11, 2022.
=== Popular sources === Marlier, Didier (November 1, 2009). "Marcial Losada Explains his Research for our Blog Readers". EnablersNetwork.com. Retrieved February 11, 2022. Bower, Bruce (August 12, 2013). "Ratio for a Good Life Exposed as 'Nonsense'". Sci. News. Retrieved 2013-08-15. 'What's shocking is not just that this piece of pseudomathematical nonsense received 322 scholarly citations and 164,000 web mentions, but that no one criticized it publicly for eight years, not even supposed experts in the field,' Sokal says.
== External links == July 28, 2013 blog post by independent science writer "Neuroskeptic", entitled "Positivity: Retract the Bathwater, Save the Baby". Archived August 1, 2013, at the Wayback Machine