Article summary: How to Overcome Your Brain’s Fixation on Bad Things
Highlights from an article on negativity bias - How to Overcome Your Brain’s Fixation on Bad Things
Why can’t we pull our attention away from a traffic accident or stop watching news about the latest viral outbreak? Why are we waylaid by criticism or unable to get past a minor snub from our best friend? That’s our negativity bias. We humans have a propensity to give more weight in our minds to things that go wrong than to things that go right—so much so that just one negative event can hijack our minds in ways that can be detrimental to our work, relationships, health, and happiness.
A mind is prone to overreact to negative things relative to positive things; so people can use this to manipulate us, or we can use this to manipulate other people.
We’re very upset when someone doesn’t fulfill a promise, but if they do extra, we’re not grateful enough for it.
People learn more and faster from punishment and reward. Negative feedback stimulates learning faster than the positive.
Relationships are far more strongly affected by negative things than positive things. Bad things have about two, three, or four times as much impact as good things. If you want to have a good relationship, go for at least a five-to-one ratio of good things to bad things. One nice thing doesn’t make up for one bad thing—you’ve got to do four things just to get back to even.
Mass media aims at a mass audience, and the things that affect everyone tend to be negative—we’re all afraid of dying; we’re all afraid of being hurt. For journalists, focusing on those shared concerns is the easiest way to reach a mass audience. The “merchants of bad”... the media and politics and advertising—are continually scaring us. Market research shows that it’s the way to get people’s attention. Curating your news feed so that you’re not seeing so many negative stories can be good. Understanding how negativity bias works can help people see how they’re being manipulated and that what they hear or read is not necessarily an accurate view of the situation or even representative, and they’re just overreacting to the bad.
Keeping a gratitude diary will help you think about the good things in your life and lift your spirits.
Bad is stronger than good, but good can prevail. As we understand our inner nature, this negativity effect, we can use our rational brain to override that when it gets in our way and can use it for positive purposes. The more we can get our rational brain involved in overriding these gut reactions, the more things will keep getting better.
Why can’t we pull our attention away from a traffic accident or stop watching news about the latest viral outbreak? Why are we waylaid by criticism or unable to get past a minor snub from our best friend? That’s our negativity bias. We humans have a propensity to give more weight in our minds to things that go wrong than to things that go right—so much so that just one negative event can hijack our minds in ways that can be detrimental to our work, relationships, health, and happiness.
A mind is prone to overreact to negative things relative to positive things; so people can use this to manipulate us, or we can use this to manipulate other people.
We’re very upset when someone doesn’t fulfill a promise, but if they do extra, we’re not grateful enough for it.
People learn more and faster from punishment and reward. Negative feedback stimulates learning faster than the positive.
Relationships are far more strongly affected by negative things than positive things. Bad things have about two, three, or four times as much impact as good things. If you want to have a good relationship, go for at least a five-to-one ratio of good things to bad things. One nice thing doesn’t make up for one bad thing—you’ve got to do four things just to get back to even.
Mass media aims at a mass audience, and the things that affect everyone tend to be negative—we’re all afraid of dying; we’re all afraid of being hurt. For journalists, focusing on those shared concerns is the easiest way to reach a mass audience. The “merchants of bad”... the media and politics and advertising—are continually scaring us. Market research shows that it’s the way to get people’s attention. Curating your news feed so that you’re not seeing so many negative stories can be good. Understanding how negativity bias works can help people see how they’re being manipulated and that what they hear or read is not necessarily an accurate view of the situation or even representative, and they’re just overreacting to the bad.
Keeping a gratitude diary will help you think about the good things in your life and lift your spirits.
Bad is stronger than good, but good can prevail. As we understand our inner nature, this negativity effect, we can use our rational brain to override that when it gets in our way and can use it for positive purposes. The more we can get our rational brain involved in overriding these gut reactions, the more things will keep getting better.
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