On Negativity

I listened to an interesting interview on Freakonomics yesterday. The episode focuses on the negativity bias — the psychological fact that the human condition is predisposed to negativity. Evolutionary biology dictates that humans recognize and emphasize negative stimuli. This bias makes sense when negative equals death.

In today’s world, negative things rarely rise to the level of fatality. But we still hold a negativity bias. John Gottman and Robert Levenson, in research on relationships, conclude that there is a 5:1 ratio between positive and negative experiences. To balance one negative interaction, someone needs five positive subsequent examples.

That’s a bit worrying.

I do not experience a plethora of negative interactions in my life and am fortunate for that. However, they occur. And they linger.

If relationships are all about first impressions, then early negative experiences would be especially damaging. This makes me wonder about my own first few interactions with others. If one of those first connections is negative, is there any hope to swing back to a positive footing? How many times have I had a bad day and meet a new co-worker or a friend of a friend and equated my mood with them? And subsequently, how many of those relationships have I gone on to cultivate further? The answer is probably a low number.

The more likely scenario involves the longer-standing, more permanent relationships in my life. A certain number of these I view as negative. How many more positive interactions with those friends and family members will I need for my own bias to change? Will I even make or spend the time or energy to cultivate these relationships?

Many of these answers are unknowable. But it does make me think about the next time I am first meeting coworkers or am frustrated at a friend: look to the positive first. Granted, this is a lot easier said than done since negativity bias kept our ancestors out of the lion’s belly.