I think there's a good reason negativity signals intelligence. Scholarship is about _critical_ thinking, challenging assertions, falsifying hypotheses, etc. If you agree with something it could therefore appear like you didn't do enough research to find some flaw with it.
In any case, contrarianism is rampant where I am (undergrad at umich), and it gets annoying when the default reaction---often without basis---is disagreement.
I completely agree (ironically enough). I always seem to be taking a critical view of ideas, but I'm also extra diligent to base my opinions in logic and fact. Nevertheless, I can't shake the feeling that I'm just Mr. Negativity; I don't feel particularly inspired when I'm critical, but I can't let go of the need for rational thought.
It's fairly well-established that creativity thrives in an environment of support and optimism -- is criticism truly poisonous for success, or are we all just fooled by survivor bias?
(for example: let's say that 99% of ideas are bad, but 99% of all ideas are generated by blind optimism. Thus nearly all successful ideas are generated by blind optimists, but the survivors don't accurately reflect the success rate of optimistic thinking. If this is true, it's easy to be critical, hard to be successful, and the enormous successes are so rare, that they don't accurately reflect much of anything, other than luck....)
This study is obviously flawed and the conclusions utterly unfounded, but it would take me far too long to list all the objections that half of you wouldn't understand anyway.
In any case, contrarianism is rampant where I am (undergrad at umich), and it gets annoying when the default reaction---often without basis---is disagreement.