What is the Negativity Bias?
The concept of negative bias suggests that humans are more influenced by negative experiences than positive ones. People tend to remember insults more easily than compliments, and this bias can shape decision making in areas such as politics and parenting. Negative campaigning can exploit this bias, and for positive experiences to resonate, they need to occur with greater frequency than negative experiences. Parents should be aware of this bias as it can shape their parenting styles.
Negative bias is a concept noted by psychologists Roy F. Baumister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Kathleen Vohs and Catrin Finkenauer. Their findings on this observed tendency in human behavior were published in 2001 in the Review of General Psychology in an article titled Bad is Stronger than Good. In essence, these theorists strongly argue that negative experience or fear of negative events have a much greater impact on people than neutral experiences or even positive experiences. Humans are therefore biased towards behavior that avoids negative experiences and are much more likely to remember and be influenced by past negative experiences.
The concepts advanced by the negativity bias theory aren’t exactly new. Previous research in this area includes the development of prospect theory, which evaluates the ways people make choices when there is known risk. Negativity bias theory and perspective theory tend to agree that people are much more likely to choose things based on their need to avoid negative experiences, rather than their desire to get positive things.
As you think about your life, you may notice some ways in which you exhibit negative bias. For example, try to remember a compliment you received in middle school and then try to remember an insult. Many people will remember insults much more easily than compliments, although this can vary. Negative events tend to resonate and be more memorable than positive or neutral events. Evil really seems stronger than good.
Theories of negativity bias tend to explain why negative and smear campaigning and the politics of fear, uncertainty, and doubt are so effective in elections. People may vote based not so much on their admiration for a particular candidate, but on the candidate who seems to have the least chance of bringing negative or bad things into their lives. A campaign that exploits the negativity bias paints the opposing candidate as someone to be feared and often makes false claims that another candidate’s leadership would result in numerous negative things: more taxes, less security, and the like.
Parents should also understand negativity bias because it can influence and shape parenting. Parents can offer children many positive and neutral experiences every day. However, the day mom or dad loses it and yells at the kids is the day kids, even as adults, are likely to remember. Knowing that a negative act toward a child is likely to become much more prominent in a child’s memory can help us remember how important it is to try to stay calm. It also turns out that for positive experiences to resonate, they need to occur with a much greater frequency.
TV host Dr. Phil reflects this brilliantly in his assertion that it could take 100-1000 “boy attacks” at a child to deflect the single negative or shame-based statement at a child. While this may be a slight exaggeration, there is some evidence in the negativity bias that Dr. Phil is on the right track. In studies of bias and negative relationships, in order to maintain a healthy or even neutral relationship, a couple (statistically speaking) must be able to list about five positive things about each other for every negative. Fewer positives can mean that the relationship is viewed in a negative light and could predict a bad relationship outcome.
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