Positive thinking may be a quintessentially American activity, associated in our minds with both individual and national success, but it is driven by a terrible insecurity.

Everyone in the corporate world, it seems, is in danger of falling into a nonproductive funk unless continually propped up by fresh doses of motivational adrenaline.

Today, hardly anyone needs to be reminded of the importance of interpersonal skills. Most of us work with people, on people, and around people. We have become the emotional wallpaper in other people’s lives, less individuals with our own quirks and needs than dependable sources of smiles and optimism.

We’ve gone so far down this yellow brick road that “positive” seems to us not only normal but normative—the way you should be.

In this thickly peopled setting, the “soft skills” of interpersonal relations came to count for more than knowledge and experience in getting the job done.

Like pop positive thinking, positive psychology attends almost solely to the changes a person can make internally by adjusting his or her own outlook.

The rewards for exuding a positive manner are all the greater in a culture that expects no less. Where cheerfulness is the norm, crankiness can seem perverse.

The consumer culture encourages individuals to want more—cars, larger homes, television sets, cell phones, gadgets of all kinds—and positive thinking is ready at hand to tell them they deserve more and can have it if they really want it and are willing to make the effort to get it.

In this moral system, either you look on the bright side, constantly adjusting your attitude and revising your perceptions—or you go over to the dark side.