Post No.: 0667
Fluffystealthkitten says:
The recall of unpleasant memories is greater compared to with pleasant ones. This is because of our ‘negativity bias’. We tend to give more mental attention and weight to things that go wrong than go right. An unexpected snub from a friend can occupy our minds for days. One criticism can make us feel insecure about a feature of the way we look. We will rubberneck if there’s been a traffic accident.
Good or neutral events get reported less because they’re like ‘non-events’ (e.g. no one drowned in a particular lake yesterday). They’re relatively ordinary and mundane. Things that exhibit gradual progress especially get glossed over unless we specifically ask about them (e.g. that infant mortality has been slowly declining globally). But due to the negativity bias, if there’s been a gradual trend of improvement in something, then any subsequent sudden dips will more likely be remarked on than the overall upward trend (e.g. the value of a particular currency or stock one has invested in).
Even more salient than bad news is simply unusual news (e.g. stories of toddlers falling from tall buildings but surviving with no injuries, which is obviously good news – yet do toddlers who fall from great heights usually come away unscathed?) Thus good events must typically be exceptional before they become newsworthy, and bad events that begin to become sadly too commonplace start to lose their newsworthiness per individual incident. But between exceptional bad news and exceptional good news, the former is generally more salient (negative potency).
More news, and therefore more bad news, is reported nowadays also because there’s better surveillance – more people with smartphone cameras to capture, in this case, evidences of horror. Mortality rates per 100,000 people per year have generally declined over the centuries, but we see more ‘defining’ gruesome images today than ever. Nations sometimes glorify their own histories too – by making them seem much better than they really were – which may make some patriotic people believe that today isn’t as good as it was back then. All this skew in history and reporting skews our perception of the world – but things aren’t as bad today as the history lessons and media may overall imply.
The growing magnitude of negative feelings of dread as we draw closer to the date of our regular feline enteritis booster jab feels steeper than the growing magnitude of positive feelings of anticipation as we draw closer to the date of our fur-olicking birthday bash (assuming that we rate them both as equally important to us).
Despite what’s good or going right around us or what compliments we receive, one negative thing can distract us to the detriment of our relationships, work, health and happiness. Negative dominance describes how even if we, say, receive 6 nice comments and 6 harsh comments, the whole tends to feel more negative than the sum of its parts. As a very loose rule – for every bad comment or result that happens, we need about 4 or 5 good ones to perceptually balance or cancel them out.
Analogously to how it’s said that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile (whether this is actually true or not) – it’s suggested that the conceptualisation of negativity is more complex and requires more cognitive resources to deal with or suppress than positivity (negative differentiation). And in English at least, we have more words and phrases (expletives or otherwise) to describe negative than positive emotions.
Perhaps, from the perspective of evolution and survival instincts – a missed opportunity might mean a missed meal but a missed threat could kill us and thus be fatal for our lineage, hence we evolved a negativity bias to keep our eyes more on any potential threats. However, for most of us in this world today, most of the things we stress about in modern life aren’t genuinely life-threatening if we think more critically about them, even though they trigger the same instinctive fight-or-flight reaction in us.
For most of us, we therefore normally prioritise avoiding a pain over seeking a pleasure. We’re loss averse. Brain scans show that, even when our conscious isn’t aware of it, our unconscious can quickly pick up (what it assumes are potential) threats in the environment, like the face of an angry person or a ****ing swear word, which causes our heart rate to accelerate! Our unconscious doesn’t find the face of a happy person quite as quickly arousing.
Our instinctive ‘system one’ evolved to give priority to bad news, threats or fears. Even purely symbolic threats (e.g. emotionally-loaded words such as ‘crime’ or ‘vomit’) or statements or opinions we disagree with are treated as threatening by system one. Most people find that one cockroach will ruin the appeal of an entire bowl of strawberries, but one strawberry won’t make a bowl of cockroaches appealing! Negativity overrides positivity in many ways, and loss aversion is just one manifestation of this broad negativity bias. One-for-one – bad feedback, bad parents, bad feelings, bad events, have more impact on us than good ones; risk factors are more affecting than protective factors; and negative information is processed more thoroughly than positive information.
We’re more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Unwelcome impressions or stereotypes are quicker to form and are more resistant to disconfirmation than welcome ones. Hence reputations and friendships are hard to build but relatively easier to destroy.
This overreaction to negative events, or potentially negative events, compared to positive ones can be exploited to manipulate us though. We’ll more likely click on a news story that has a headline of fear. Commercial adverts frequently exaggerate certain fears then purrport to sell us the products we’ll ‘need’ to alleviate them. And political campaigns often diss their main rivals to grab our attentions and votes cheaply.
It also means that many things that are good or go right in our daily lives are taken for granted without gratitude. All those nice comments we receive are under-weighted as we focus on the negativity. Somebody who does slightly more than they promised will garner little or no credit for it, but over-promising and under-delivering will cause us to grumble.
Understanding all this, to combat the negativity bias in this modern world where most of the sources of our stresses aren’t really something that’ll likely cause us to literally die (e.g. losing one’s phone, the dishwasher broke) – we need to employ more conscious effort into recognising and appreciating the good that’s around us. Our automatic system one has a tendency to focus on what’s bad and unlucky, but we need to consciously engage our ‘system two’ to notice what’s fine and fortunate about and around us. But don’t venture into over-thinking – just deliberately ask yourself what you’ve still got right now that you’d miss if it suddenly disappeared? Things are almost never as bad as they may feel.
This understanding of our negativity bias should improve our empathy too – if you do or say something that hurts someone then understand that it may take a few good interactions or comments to make up for it in the other person’s mind. Long-term relationships depend more on avoiding the negative than seeking the positive (although seeking positive experiences together is vital too).
It’s also arguably better, when giving appraisals, to get any bad feedback out of the way first then get onto the good – because when people depart with the criticism, that’ll be what’s left dwelling on their mind. Any good news doesn’t seem to get banked to buffer against any future bad news (e.g. 3 wins then a loss feels worse than a loss then 3 wins – sports team managers understand that they’re only as good as their last result and any past successes get devalued or forgotten about rather quickly). So cover the bad before the good, then let them know how they can improve.
We generally only begin to give a damn about things when they start going to pot, such as things related to our health or the environment. We take for granted and neglect things that are going well or are lucky for us, which can eventually lead to them deteriorating and causing us problems. We don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone! So another reason to not take good things for granted is to draw attention onto them so that we can preserve or safeguard them.
Hearing good news is of course generally better than hearing bad news. There are occasions however when good news can make people feel even worse if they’re not feeling so good themselves about that aspect of the good news that’s being covered (e.g. hearing that the economy is rebounding yet one’s own personal financial situation isn’t). It’s like having one’s furry face being rubbed in it. Therefore bad news can sometimes be reassuring in the sense that it can make us realise that we’re all sharing a common hardship, which can make us feel not quite so alone. It’s not to say that negativity is therefore healthy but both good and bad emotions and feelings that are shared or co-experienced improve our connections with others, for which feeling socially connected is one thing that is important for our well-being.
‘Self-distancing’ involves psychologically distancing your self-centred or first-person perspective from the events or feelings you’re experiencing to, for instance, distance yourself from an emotionally stressful or angry present situation or traumatic past event, so that it doesn’t overwhelm you and so that you can better make more reasoned decisions. Self-distancing can be achieved by taking a second or third-person perspective on the matter instead (e.g. asking yourself, “Why did you do that?” instead of, “Why did I do that?”) Distancing from our own usual first-person perspective might also help us to recognise that alternative viewpoints exist outside of our own.
Expressive writing can be a form of self-distancing. Attributing one’s thoughts or behaviours to one’s OCD or addiction instead of to oneself works well for some who have these or similar conditions too. It’s about being less egocentric or introspective, and looking from a more external point of view, which may of course include someone else’s such as someone you’re currently interacting with or an independent observer.
To conclude, bad news is crucial to know because they’re like warnings. (Post No.: 0663 illuminated the dark side of positive thinking.) But we also need to put them into proper perspective because there are lots of good things happening every day across the world but they’re not getting reported on because they’re considered ‘non-events’. The same when it comes to what’s in or happening in our own lives. Even if we might want to escape our life by voluntarily ending it all – big chances are there are still things to hang on for, things that can be worked on, and things that still give us joy.
So mentally take a step back from it all now and again and put into better perspective the stresses in your life. Don’t ignore the fact you may be stressed but divert attention away from the stressor if you can’t change it, or change the situation if you can. Very often, it’s not about changing the situation that’s external of one’s mind but changing one’s attention or one’s attitude towards and interpretation of it. Accept the things you cannot change or aren’t worth your life to change (because you should be happy with the way you are), and have the courage to change the things you can and should change (as self-improvement).
Meow. If you’d like, through the Twitter comment button just below, you can share any thoughts you might have right now that make you realise ‘actually, things aren’t quite as bad in the world or in my life as I thought’. More love you than don’t. Or if you don’t quite feel that’s true then Furrywisepuppy and I are here. <3
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