What Is Negativity Bias?
Negativity bias refers to our proclivity to “attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information” (Vaish, Grossmann, & Woodward, 2008, p. 383). We can think of it as an asymmetry in how we process negative and positive occurrences to understand our world, one in which “negative events elicit more rapid and more prominent responses than non-negative events” (Carretié, Mercado, Tapia, & Hinojosa., 2001, p. 75).
Among other things, it can explain why we often:
- Recall and think about insults more than compliments
- Respond more – emotionally and physically – to aversive stimuli
- Dwell on unpleasant or traumatic events more than pleasant ones
- Focus our attention more quickly on negative rather than positive information
Even when we experience numerous good events in one day, negativity bias can cause us to focus on the sole bad thing that occurred. It can lead us to ruminate on small things, worry over having made a bad impression, and linger on negative comments (Lupfer, Weeks, & Dupuis, 2000; Chen & Lurie, 2013; Wisco, Gilbert, & Marroquín, 2014).
Where does this bias come from? Can we learn to spot examples of negativity bias in real life? And how can we avoid falling into the trap of getting caught up by negative events?
Where does it come from?
Negativity bias is thought to be an adaptive evolutionary function (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1999; Vaish et al., 2008; Norman et al., 2011). Thousands of years ago, our ancestors were exposed to immediate environmental threats that we no longer need to worry about – predators, for example – and being more attentive to these negative stimuli played a useful role in survival.
These days, the bias may play a role in our early development. As Vaish et al. (2008, p. 18) point out, infants don’t have extensive life experience to draw on: “the earlier an organism learns that it should avoid those stimuli that its conspecifics find aversive, the better are its chances for survival.”
Negativity bias helps them avoid potentially harmful stimuli in the absence of learned information about ambiguous stimuli.
It’s hard to argue that a negative bias isn’t still helpful in some circumstances, but as we grow and society develops, this hardwired tendency is not as useful as it once was.
3 Examples of Negativity Bias
Several studies illustrate how this asymmetry affects our attention and cognitive processes on a day-to-day basis.
We respond more to negative stimuli
Ito, Larsen, Smith, and Cacioppo (1998) found that our brains respond more intensely to negative stimuli. The researchers presented photos to 33 participants and measured their brain’s electrical activity to study its responses.
Some were affectively neutral (an electrical outlet, a plate), some were considered positive pictures (people enjoying a rollercoaster), and some were deemed negative images (a gun pointed at the camera, a mutilated face).
Findings showed more event-related brain potentials (ERPs), or activity, when participants viewed negative, as opposed to positive images, leading the researchers to conclude that our evaluations are more strongly influenced by the former.
News coverage is predominantly negative
Around the world, negative news articles appear to dominate the media, but why are they so prevalent? One hypothesis is that due to negativity bias, negative coverage is more attention grabbing than positive coverage. This is a logical inference from the study results we just described (and many more), but is it actually the case?
Soroka, Fournier, and Nir (2019) looked into whether demand for negative information is a cross-national phenomenon. Examining people’s psychophysiological reactions to video news content in 17 countries, their results revealed that, globally, humans are more aroused by and attentive to negative news on average.
We think about negative events more
Have you ever been hung up on something terrible that happened earlier in the week, despite everything else going great? Our tendency to think more about negative events is another example of this bias in action. Larsen (2009) reviewed ample evidence to suggest that negative emotions last longer than positive ones, that we tend to spend more time thinking about negative events, and that we often reason about them more.
This is likely related to learning and memory processes. The more attention we give to a stimulus or experience, the higher the likelihood that we’ll commit it to memory (Ohira, Winton, & Oyama, 1998).
Can you think of more examples of negativity bias in action?
What our readers think
Negative thought behavior stimuli and how humans can or cannot comprehend such in news articles, political commentary and other online engagement is what is keeping us in a Divided States of America and causing increases in violence with many toward others. So sad and emotionally disturbing that we see war continuing on and on with male oligarchs. So having an understanding and awareness of such is an amazing positive gift. Thank you for this wonderful site and informative articles. Tend and Befriend is so much more positive than fight or flight behavior. Go Karmala (!!), we need a woman leader in politics finally to change the adversity that we now see in such. Keep surfing and go play outside was the best advice I ever received as a child, old ski bum, sailor, rock climber, nature is the most positive place to be in awe and all those amazing visionary people who created such in the name of positive stimuli.
Hereditary instincts are like hard wired into us for survival,don’t fight it but accept that you are human Afterall and let the feelings flow away like a bad storm does and know a brighter day is around the corner if you let it.