When all the words you hear about the economy are bullish, you may want to run in the other direction. This counterintuitive finding — that positive visions of the future precede downturns — appears to be the case both for people and the economy as a whole.

This bad news for unbridled optimism was laid out in a paper published in Psychological Science online in February. The study looked at the relationship between economic malaise and language in newspaper articles and presidential addresses. The finding was stark: Optimistic language was a predictor of poor performance.

“A cultural climate of positive thinking about the future, may have contributed to low economic achievement,” the article concludes.

The paper, by scholars from New York University and the University of Hamburg, speculates that widespread optimism could cause people to discount the risk of trouble ahead, make unwise investments, be less entrepreneurial and thus exacerbate or even create economic weakness.