A ‘low-bad’ diet? First, let me say that this has nothing to do with food, as in the stuff we stuff in our mouths. Rather, it’s the stuff that gets stuffed into our heads. Of note, and related in general to the message of this blog, it’s important to understand that our brain’s negativity bias evolved because it was a survival mechanism that worked for our ancestral hunter-gatherers. In other words, our ancient human ancestor’s brains evolved into valuing their negative day to day living experiences because they learned much more from their mistakes, including recognizing the animals who wanted to eat them.
In the WSJ over the last weekend of December 2019 there was a Saturday Essay reviewing (“For the New Year, Say No to Negativity”) a new book, “The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It.”
Briefly, authors John Tierney and Roy Baumeister posit that bad experiences affect us much more powerfully over time than good ones, but there are ways to deal with destructive bias in our brains and ways we can overcome the negativity.
Our minds and lives are skewed by a fundamental imbalance that is just now becoming clear to scientists: the negativity effect. Also known as the negativity bias, it’s the universal tendency for bad events and emotions to affect us more strongly than positive ones. We’re devastated by a word of criticism but unmoved by a shower of praise. We see the hostile face in the crowd and miss all the friendly smiles. We focus so much on bad news, especially in a digital world that magnifies its power that we don’t realize how much better life is becoming for people around the world.
All very true!
The authors examine the history of the negativity effect in psychology attempting to uncover the power of negativity in people’s reactions and wondered why good events in people’s lives didn’t make a greater impact and have more value to them.
The negativity effect is a fundamental aspect of psychology, yet it was discovered only in the past two decades and quite unexpectedly, as social scientists became intrigued by a couple of patterns. Psychologists studying people’s reactions had found that a bad first impression had a much greater impact than a good first impression, and experiments by behavioral economists had shown that a financial loss loomed much larger than a corresponding financial gain.
So Tierney and Baumeister proposed to identify several contrary patterns that would enable them to “develop an elaborate, complex and nuanced theory about when bad is stronger versus when good is stronger.” To their surprise, despite scouring the research literature in psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology and other disciplines, they couldn’t find compelling counter examples of good being stronger.”
So the public learned lots about psychoses and depression but precious little about the mind’s resilience and capacity for happiness. Post-traumatic stress disorder became common knowledge but not the concept of post-traumatic growth, which is actually far more common. Most people who undergo trauma ultimately feel that the experience has made them a stronger and better person. After recognizing their own bias, psychologists began compensating for it by studying the “positivity ratio,” which is the number of good events or emotions for every bad one.
In other words, they found that for every one negative emotion, there needs to be four positive events to balance things out. So to put this all into practice, researchers saw that older people are typically more contented than younger people because they’ve learned how to improve this ratio in their lives. They’ve gone on a low-bad diet, and that general approach can work for people of all ages.
Here are a few strategies for the ‘low-bad’ diet:
1. Do no harm. What really matters is what we don’t do. Avoiding bad is far more important than doing good. You get relatively little credit for doing more than you promised, but you pay a big price for falling short. Minimize the negative.
2. Remember the Rule of Four: It takes four good things to overcome one bad thing. For example, if you and your partner are having sex four times more often than you fight, that’s probably a healthy relationship. If you want to keep your business afloat, aim for at least four satisfied customers for every unsatisfied one. Also, if you say or do something hurtful, don’t expect to atone for it with one bit of goodwill. Plan on at least four compliments to make up for one bit of criticism.
3. Put the bad moments to good use. Instead of despairing at a setback, override your gut reaction and look for a useful lesson. The upside of the negativity effect is its power to teach and motivate. The self-esteem movement—one of the sorrier mistakes in psychology—left many parents reluctant to criticize or penalize children, and the ‘everybody-gets-a-trophy’ philosophy has produced rampant grade inflation in high school and college. Students routinely get As and Bs for mediocre or poor work, so they’re learning less than in the past. No one likes getting—or handing out—bad grades, but these force students to focus on what needs to be improved.
4. Capitalize on the good moments—and then relive them. To get the full value of a joy, you must have somebody to divide it with. Psychologists call it capitalization and have found that sharing good news is one of the most effective ways to become happier—but only if the other person responds enthusiastically, so make sure you rejoice in your friend’s good fortune (or at least fake it). One reason that happiness increases beyond middle age is that older people spend more time savoring good memories instead of obsessing about today’s worries.
5. See the big picture. Minimize the negative, accentuate the positive—can help you to overcome the negative bias that skews politics and public opinion. By choosing your online friends carefully and curating your news feed, you can follow the Rule of Four—at least four uplifting stories for every bad one—and get a much more accurate view of the world.
Simple enough. Let’s all try a ‘low-bad’ diet for the new year in the hopes that we all can become potentially wiser – and happier too!
See the ‘Big Picture.’