Negativity Bias Flashcards
Early negativity bias research
Definition
“We hypothesize that there is a general bias, based
on both innate predispositions and experience, in
animals and humans, to give greater weight to
negative entities (e.g., events, objects, personal
traits).”
Early negativity bias research
What does it suggest
“Taken together, these findings suggest that bad is
stronger than good, as a general principle across a
broad range of psychological phenomena.”
“We have found bad to be stronger than good in a
disappointingly relentless pattern”
“In our view, this difference may be one of the most
basic and far-reaching
psychological principles.”
“There are several reasons to think that it may be
highly adaptive for human beings to respond more
strongly to bad than good.“
Early negativity bias research
Key takeaways
“One of the major tasks of future research in this
area will be to designate those domains in which
negativity bias and positivity bias are manifested.”
“In our hope of making a better world,
it should be important to understand and perhaps
intervene in some manifestations of negativity bias.”
What is negativity bias?
Negativity bias is the tendency for negative
events, stimuli, and factors to have a greater
impact on an individual than positive
counterparts.
Where is negativity bias?
It seems to impact a variety of processes across a wide range of people and contexts
Forming impressions
Attention
Motivation
Physiological arousal
Transmitting information
What is an example of negativity bias in research findings?
Memory of events
People tend to prefer negative information when seeking and processing content, such as policy debates. Negative stimuli capture attention more quickly and strongly than positive ones. Individuals are more likely to remember negative events, including false memories, and often do so with confidence. Negative word-of-mouth influences decisions more than positive feedback, and employees are more likely to recall negative incidents at work.
What is an example of negativity bias in research findings?
Ratings
Negative language in news headlines significantly increases click rates. Bad events have a stronger impact on negative health outcomes like burnout than good events. Negative reviews are perceived as more useful than positive ones, as seen in restaurant reviews on platforms like Yelp. Similarly, participants showed higher attentiveness and arousal, reflected by greater heart rate variability, during negative news stories compared to positive ones.
What is an example of negativity bias in research findings?
Words, Feedback, Mentoring
Negative words are remembered better than positive ones. People give more weight to negative features of new stimuli than positive ones. Negatively-valenced information is more likely to spread socially.
Individuals update their self-performance estimates more based on negative feedback than positive feedback, though they treat feedback about others equally.
Bad mentoring experiences have a stronger impact on mood, workplace withdrawal, and intentions to stay in mentoring relationships than good experiences.
Negativity bias in sport and exercise
ATTENTION (Definition)
Negative elements of a
situation more strongly
capture and hold
attention and focus
compared to positive
elements of a situation.
Negativity bias in sport and exercise
ATTENTION (Examples)
Even if most people say that your form is good, if someone
says that your arm isn’t moving correctly or that you aren’t rotating correctly, you tend to focus on that.
You might be reaching 9 out of 10 of your workout goals, but
the one that isn’t going to plan takes your focus and disrupts
everything.
When you focus on the one or two things that are going wrong, it takes away your attention from what you should be
focusing on.
It is way easier to focus on the mistakes than
all of the things that I am doing well.
Negativity bias in sport and exercise
MEMORY (Definition)
It is easier to recall
negative experiences
or aspects of a situation
compared to positive
experiences or aspects
of a situation
Negativity bias in sport and exercise
MEMORY (Examples)
There might be 5 really good shifts, 10 okay shifts, and 2 bad shifts in a game, and those 2 bad shifts are the ones that you
remember.
It’s so much easier to remember the things that you didn’t do well… I feel like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel to
remember 5 things that I did well and there was probably 50.
After a game, you hear a lot of ‘I screwed up that pass’, ‘I should have done this’, no one talks about things they did well, and I do that too, even if I scored three points.
I remember the bad days in the gym more
than the good days in the gym.
Negativity bias in sport and exercise
EVALUATION (Definition)
Negative aspects of an
experience have a
stronger impact on
how that experience is
evaluated compared to
positive aspects of the
experience.
Negativity bias in sport and exercise
EVALUATION (Examples)
In a weekend tournament, one bad quarter can overshadow the entire game, and sometimes the entire weekend.
The good runs seem so rare, because everything has to be near perfect. But with a bad run, you can have one or two bad stretches in an otherwise strong run, and that ruins it.
Thinking about the one thing that you didn’t do well in a can really take away from all of the things that you did do
well.
I do get a lot of positive feedback from my trainer, but the negative feedback weighs more on how I
evaluate the day.
Negative Bias
Scale image
Despite there being mostly
positives, there is a disproportionate emphasis on the negatives
