I am super-excited to be sharing the first-ever post in The Human Condition’s new Ask the Psychology Professor series!
S. from the northeast, who is a paid subscriber to The Human Condition, asks the following:
Why do humans remember with so much more weight negative comments versus positive ones? For example, someone once told me it takes 5 positive comments to outweigh a negative one. I wonder why we have such negative bias even among generally optimistic people? And in general, how can we focus more on and put more weight on the positive?
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The professor in me immediately needs to say this: Great Question, S.!!!
The phenomenon that often is termed the “negativity bias” (e.g., Rozin et al., 2001), is a broad, ubiquitous phenomenon that has been found via various methods and classes of stimuli for decades within the behavioral sciences. In short, this bias speaks to the fact that people tend to (often, albeit not always) disproportionately focus on the dark side of life. Further, in many ways, such pessimism tends to have evolutionary roots.
The Negativity Bias Exemplified
To put a face to the negativity bias, imagine the following: You’re at a happy hour event with some friends on a Friday night. You talk with your friend Richard about a concert that you both saw recently. It was awesome and it was great to reconnect over it. You order wings that you swear must be the best wings that you ever had. And the waitress compliments you in front of the crowd by saying that she knows your reputation in your professional field and hears that you are just the best.
You’re having a great time out at the pub. Then it happens … You check your phone at some point and see a text from a person whom you are very close with and it says, simply, “I can’t be friends with you anymore—please don’t even ask me why.”
WOW! That’s a doozy! You immediately try to text the person back to see what is up, only to find out that you have been blocked. The sting is extraordinary.
Later, when another person in your circle asks you how Happy Hour was, you try your best to say how great it was, but it doesn’t feel right—you are totally stuck on that one negative exchange—fully discounting anything positive that happened along the way.
THAT is what the negativity bias looks like.
An Evolutionary Explanation of the Negativity Bias
Evolutionary approaches to human psychology often focus on how some common attribute of our psychology would have played a role in helping human ancestors to survive and reproduce.
While focusing on the negatives in life doesn’t exactly always feel great, it can, in fact, be very adaptive. Imagine there are two human ancestors by a campfire at night and something long and, for lack of a better term, snakelike, wriggles across both your toes. You jump off your log and start screaming like a four-year old.
Your friend on the other hand seems to think that it’s nothing and that you’re over-reacting. Well, maybe you are over-reacting, but that over-reaction is actually more likely to keep you alive (by motivating you to avoid being bitten by poisonous snakes) compared to your overly optimistic counterpart.
The reason that negativity bias is so common is, simply, because it has been so adaptive in helping our ancestors deal with legitimate threats from the environment (see our book, Positive Evolutionary Psychology, for more on this topic).
Think about it this way: Would you rather have a smoke alarm that goes off a bit too easily, occasionally sounding an alarm when there is no fire, or one that is very lackadaisical and that goes off only when a good two or three rooms are up in flames? That first alarm has a negativity bias. And it saves lives. The latter alarm should probably be returned to Lowe’s.
Individual Differences in the Negativity Bias
Granted, not everyone focuses so much on the negatives. People who tend to score as less “neurotic” and as more “emotionally stable” (see Costa & McCrae, 1985). are less likely to manifest the negativity bias relative to others. So sure, there is individual variability in the negativity bias—and this is partly related to individual differences in emotional stability. But this said, across people in general, we tend to be prone, in many ways, toward pessimism instead of optimism. And evolution can help us understand why.
Bottom Line
S., I hope this helps answer your questions. The negativity bias is real and it has a strong evolutionary substrate. Perhaps think about that next time you find yourself worrying about one thing or another—realize that you’re not alone—it’s all 8 billion of us.
Thank you so much for reaching out to Ask The Psychology Professor!
References
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1985). The NEO Personality Inventory manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.
Geher, G. & Wedberg, N. (2022). Positive Evolutionary Psychology: Darwin’s Guide to Living a Richer Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(4), 296–320. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327957PSPR0504_2