Think Positive and Feel Positive

    When you're in a stressful situation, are you confident or unsafe? Do you react positively or negatively?

    A study by researchers at the University of Notre Dame found that negative thinking, and depression coming from it, can be catching in certain circumstances.

    For example, the researchers studied 103 freshman college roommates who'd been paired casually.Specifically, the researchers measured the subject's likelihood to see negative events as a reflection of their abilities and disadvantages.

    After only six months, it became clear that thinking patterns and styles can be catching.And students paired with more positive thinking roommates were more likely to become more positive in their thinking and report less depression.

    So they might be particularly accessible to adopting the thought and behavior patterns of people around them — perhaps more so than people in less intense situations at other stages of life.

    But maybe not. Other research has shown that, in general, people are affected by how those around them think.

A. The answer may depend in part on whom you're around.

B. Now college freshman are in a unique, life changing environment.

C. However, think positive and feel positive is quite important for college students.

D. Students paired with a negative-thinking roommate “caught” that style and became more depressed themselves.

E. They measured each roommate's cognitive weakness, or tendency to give in to negative thinking and depression.

F. So surrounding a negative, depressed person with people who think positively could be a powerful form of treatment.

G. But what was to the researchers' embarrassment was that the subjects never talked with each and stayed apart from each other for most of the time.