Bad is stronger than good
25th June 2007
When I toss out this title of a recent paper, people usually have a negative reaction.
http://www.csom.umn.edu/Assets/71516.pdf
I have to explain the authors are talking about the fact that negative events cause a greater emotional reaction than positive events. This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Missing something positive, like a good meal, be annoying but missing something negative like a prowling predator could be fatal.
As I was considering this idea, a lot of random items sort of lined up like iron filings near a magnet.
In the media business - “If it bleeds, it leads”: You get bigger ratings because people react more strongly to negative events.
Politics – negative campaign ads: People say they don’t like them but they work because we tend to react more strongly and remember negative facts about someone else.
Psychology – the fact the optimists are not as realistic as pessimists: Perhaps that is a natural defense mechanism to offset the fact that negative anticipations will be stronger than positive anticipations.
Psychology – the rose-colors glasses that we see our significant other through: People tend to overlook negative aspects of their mates because if they did not, the stronger effect of negative personality traits and habits might tend to drive them apart.
Psychology – risk versus reward: Some recent experiments suggest that a possible gain needs to be about twice as big as a possible loss in order to balance out the emotional impacts.
Religion – the idea that everything happens according to God’s plan: This is a fall back to explain away and soften the blow of negative events.
And so on….
I am sure you will come up with your own examples.
In any case, “Keep your sunny side up!”
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:08 pm
[...] Gilbert Author Network newcomer Burt Webb points us at a psychology article that explores how bad is stronger than good. [...]