Pollyanna principle Pollyanna principle The Pollyanna principle (also called Pollyannaism or positivity bias) is the tendency for people to remember pleasant items more accurately than unpleasant ones. Research indicates that at the subconscious level, the mind has a tendency to focus on the optimistic; while at the conscious level, it has a tendency to focus on the negative. This subconscious bias towards the positive is often described as the Pollyanna principle and is similar to the Forer effect. The name derives from the 1913 novel "Pollyanna" by Eleanor H. Porter describing a girl who plays the "glad game"—trying to find something to
Ship of Fools (Porter novel) mostly written between 1922 and 1940. She began work on the novel in 1940, intending it initially to be a novella (or "short novel", as Porter would put it, as she famously wrote about how she detested the word "novella"). The story was based on a journal she kept in 1931 during a sea voyage from Veracruz, Mexico, on her way to study in Bremerhaven, Germany, on a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the characters in the novel were based on real people she met during the trip. The title was taken from "Das Narrenschiff" ("The Fool-Ship"), a 15th-century German poem by