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- [00:01]
Melina Palmer
Hey there, Melina here.
- [00:02]
Really quickly, before we get into the episode, if you've ever wanted to level up your goals or your communication, I've got great news. Two of my most popular courses through Texas A and M's Human Behavior Lab are open now for enrollment. Setting brainy goals helps you to actually achieve those big plans, not just write them down and forget about them. And creating better presentations will totally transform the way you communicate at work and in meetings or on stage. They're part of the certificate in Applied Behavioral Economics.
- [00:35]
But you don't have to commit to.
- [00:36]
The entire program to join either of these classes. There are no prerequisites, no fluff, just.
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Three weeks, all virtual directly with me.
- [00:45]
And some other brainy folks from around the world. If you're interested to learn more and enroll, head to HBL like Human Behavior Lab, TAMU like Texas A and M University Edu, and click on certificate program to learn more and enroll again. That's hbl, tamu Edu and click on certificate program. I can't wait to see you in class. And when you're ready, let's start the show. Welcome to episode 548 of the Brainy Business. Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. Today's episode is all about negativity bias. How it sneaks into our decisions, relationships, and even the way we see ourselves. Ready? Let's get started.
- [01:38]
Podcast Narrator
You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.
- [01:54]
Melina Palmer
Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast.
- [02:00]
Have you ever had one bad moment? Just a little hiccup that ruined an otherwise amazing day?
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Maybe someone cut you off in traffic or your boss gave some helpful feedback that stuck with you way longer than the praise that came before it. It's not just being moody, it's your brain being human. And it's called Negativity bias. This refreshed episode, which originally aired in September of 2022, is packed with practical insights into how this bias shows up in our daily lives, relationships, work, and strategic decisions. We'll dig into why your brain clings to the bad so much more than it celebrates the good and what that means in your business, your leadership, and your life. I'm super excited to share it with you because it has one of my all time favorite metaphors about cherries and cockroaches. Trust me, it's worth it. Whether you're new to this concept or ready for a deeper understanding of the science behind it, this episode is one you're going to want to come back to again and again really quickly. Before we get into it, I want to be sure you know there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch, and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 548 now let's jump right in and learn about Negativity Bias.
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So what is negativity bias? It likely seems pretty self explanatory, and it kind of is on the surface, but as you'll learn during this episode, it's so much more impactful than you probably think. In its most basic form, negativity bias is our tendency to put more emphasis on negative information than positive. This is something we developed as part of our evolution. It was really key to our survival way back in our evolutionary line. Imagine there are two people walking in search of food. It's getting dark out and suddenly there's a noise in the distance. The first person assumes the worst and hightails it out of there quickly retreating to safety. The second person says, you know, I get that you're scared, but I bet this is nothing to be afraid of. Let me just see if I've cut their line of thinking off because they've already been eaten by the predator that was waiting for them in the bushes. Negativity bias Putting more weight on the bad than the good, Being on high alert and paying attention to potential threats was really key for us to survive as a species. This is a good thing and it still serves us well a lot in our lives. Remembering the time we fell as a child and skinned our knee or stubbed our toe and can remind us to wear long pants or close toed shoes when riding a bike. And hopefully a helmet too. Sometimes the negativity bias goes a bit far though, and can result in phobias or other avoidances that don't serve us well. Say we fell off our bike once after loving to ride for years and have vowed to never ride again. Even with hundreds or thousands of experiences in the positive column, the a single negative can combat them all and taint the entire experience. Consider employee reviews. I've had a lot of employee reviews over the years with most of the comments being positive. However, I still remember from my first review at one company where my boss told me she begged people to give her some constructive criticism for me because everyone had only nice things to say. I promise this isn't intended to be a humble brag.
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I really just want to make a point.
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So so she said that after numerous requests, she finally got someone to give an example of something for me to work on, which was then shared with me and documented on this formal piece of paper for the rest of my time with that company. This is kind of like the threat of something going on your permanent record being enough to keep an otherwise unruly kid in line. The fear of that one negative holds a lot of weight in many ways, not just on our own behavior, but also in how people think of us overall. One mistake can undo a lifetime of good deeds, but more on that in a little bit. Back to the single piece of constructive criticism on that review. It was over a decade ago now and I still remember who said it and what was said to this day. What about all the nice things that were said in that review or the many others I've gotten over the years? They kind of blur together and are easier to forget. I couldn't really recall one specific comment right now, definitely not in the way I can remember that one Less than stellar comment this is one aspect of negativity bias where we put way, way, way more weight on the negative input than the positive. Our being a herding species is part of this as well. Being on the outskirts with the herd was something else that greatly threatened our survival back in the day. Too many marks against us and we might be out of the group and that's a one way ticket to lunch and not in the good way. So we really needed to learn from those negatives and be less likely to repeat them to the point of our own demise. In today's world, this overweighting of negatives can be problematic and cause a real negative spiral that keeps you stuck stuck and just focused on the bad in a way that causes you to ignore all the good stuff. Often, even in an ocean of good stuff, we'll focus on the tiny drop of bad that happened. But you don't have to. You can choose to focus on the good stuff and while still learning from the bad, don't let it have so much more impact on you than the good. In sharing these various examples and giving this kind of background on negativity bias, I've been sharing various aspects of of the four that are outlined in the original research from Rosen and Roisman in their paper Negativity Bias, Negativity, Dominance and Contagion, which is of course linked for.
- [08:03]
You in the show notes for the.
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Episode so the first aspect of these four is called negative potency. This says that even if two incidents were of the same type and size, they won't necessarily be felt or remembered the same way. We we tend to have longer memories for these negative items than the positive ones and feel them more strongly when they occur. The second aspect is of steeper negative gradients. I know this is a term that to a non researcher especially or a non numbers person it may have you saying come again. I promise it's just as simple as the first aspect. In essence, this says that as we get closer to a negative event its faster felt more and more and at an intensity that is more than a positive event. Imagine you were going to try a sample of your favorite dessert. Say you're at the restaurant that serves the best cheesecake, or chocolate chip cookies or ice cream, whatever your jam might be. As the moment gets closer, you may feel some excitement and anticipation and it'll grow before that first delicious bite. Now imagine the thing you're eating is something horrible, an earthworm or a piece of rancid meat. If you knew a week in advance you were going to have to eat whatever that thing is, you might feel some dread, and likely more dread than you would feel delight about the cheesecake. But as you get closer 24 hours away, three hours away, 30 minutes, one minute, you can see and smell it now. It's just seconds from your mouth, which is slowly opening to take a bite. That is likely agonizing and so much more negative and potent in your mind than the positive anticipation. And again, the big thing to note here is that while they both increase as you get closer to the event, the negative slope is steeper and much more intense. Again, that is our steeper negative gradient aspect of the four from negativity bias. From the language in this last example, you may have noticed a similarity to loss aversion. That episode is of course linked for.
- [10:19]
You in the show notes along with your freebie worksheet for this episode.
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If you want to start taking notes, it's all waiting for you@the brainybusiness.com 223 so negativity bias is definitely related to loss aversion and they are similar, but they aren't exactly the same thing. As you've heard here, negativity bias is when people pay more attention to bad news than good news. Loss aversion is when people are more worried about losing something they have than they are about getting something new. Again, similar but not exactly the Same. So we've already talked about two of the facets of negativity bias, negative potency and steeper negative gradients. Now we move on to negativity dominance. This was sort of covered in the negative potency section, but it's more about how when there is an event, the negative ones are going to make it. So our whole impression skews toward the negative. The peak end rule is a big thing to keep in mind here. When you look at an experience, people have a tendency to measure their overall experience on two points, the peak and and the end. If one or both of those are negative, even if everything else is positive, it's really going to skew the whole experience negative. And much like an anchor, those negative experience points, even if they're not, the peaks are going to drag everything down with them. So when you look at your experience, whether from a customer side or a user, or internally with teams, it's important to think about the overall experience people are having with you. Is it mostly positive or negative? Are there any big negative peaks you need to be aware of and address before looking for good things to make better? Even one negative element can drag an otherwise good thing down, and there isn't an exact ratio here, I'm sorry to say. So we can't say that you need 10 good points for every bad one or anything like that. But it is important to take a step back, look at everything with fresh eyes, get out of your own way and your knowledge of what already exists and what the intention was so you can survey the experience from the other side. Again, don't give yourself the benefit of the doubt and consider intent here. When you're reviewing these things, you want to be looking as if you don't know anything about the person who created this or what the company's about. You know, look at this from a totally different perspective in this way. I often advise clients to read their emails or ads or whatever else they're creating with the worst possible tone and intent. Don't proofread something with your own best intentions in mind, especially stuff that's really sensitive or difficult to be talking about. Don't skim through really quickly and assume people will read it the way you wrote it. Imagine instead that your work nemesis is reading that thing. They can be real or made up. If someone who hated you and thought you were out to get them was reading whatever this is or hearing the news or whatever, and how might they say it? What needs to be cleared up? What could be read into the wrong way? Where is there a possible point of misalignment that you can fix to make those negatives less impactful. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everything needs to be unicorns and rainbows all the time or you need to be insincerely optimistic.
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Far from it.
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What I am saying though is that you need to be aware of all all the information and data points surrounding whatever you're hoping to accomplish to help it have the best chance of success. As I mentioned, negativity bias comes up in my book what yout Employees need and Can't Tell youl, which is all about adapting to change and helping others to be better at change as well. Using behavioral economics and just like pricing isn't about the price change and whether or not people on board with it isn't about the change itself, all these other things surrounding the change are more important. There are some great change initiatives that have tanked and some not so awesome ones that have been embraced, and it's about the presentation of them more than again, the change itself. Knowing that people are going to have this negativity bias, both those presenting the change and those receiving it, is important as you consider how you introduce anything to anyone. And in a business you can't just think about one meeting and say that's all the context that matters. People have long memories and the experience that you need to be considering is more than that one hour of time or day or half day or whatever it is. The whole thing matters, even if you wish that it didn't. I'm not going to get into it too much here. You can pick up your copy of the book in just under three weeks and learn all about this. But the good news is you don't have to invest the same amount of time undoing negatives as they have been building up or been around. So let me explain what I mean there. If you have 10 years of history as being a not so attentive manager, or as a company that has a reputation for overworking people with very little thanks, you don't have to invest 10 years of positives to outweigh those 10 years of negatives. But it also won't happen with one meeting or email or a claim that don't worry, we're good now. It does take some effort and attention and you can't do everything, especially not all at once. Which is why you need to narrow your goals and focus on one thing at a time to continually uplevel and move your teams forward. But I feel like I've gone a bit on a tangent here. You can likely tell I'm really passionate about this, especially now as I'm so.
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Focused on the new book.
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But it's time we get back to the specificity of the negativity bias. So at this point, you know the first three aspects of negativity bias that we have. Negative potency, meaning we feel negative stuff more than positives. We also have steeper negative gradients. As negative events get closer, they get really real, really fast. And we also have negative dominance. If there's a mix of positives and negatives in an experience, the negatives will have a tendency to dominate the overall feeling of the whole thing and really outweigh the positive. So the whole thing can kind of feel negative. Our final aspect is negative differentiation, which is about the effort it takes to process an event. The negative stuff is more difficult to process, so. So it uses up more energy and cognitive resources and that makes us remember it more and for longer. Combined, these four forces work together to make it so we can really focus on negatives and let them contaminate everything else around them, darkening what would have been an otherwise great experience. Imagine you went on a week long vacation and everything was delightful. Then on the flight home, there were delays and someone was rude to you and your seat wouldn't recline. Or when someone asks you how the trip was, you might be inclined to remember that negative piece and have it cloud everything else to where you can't really fully appreciate the good that was there because you're so stuck on those negative things that happen just in a very small portion of the overall experience. Or if you're in a meeting and everything's going great and then someone interrupts you in the middle of a point, you may stew on that for hours after and the whole meeting could be sullied for you. Or if you spilled something on your shirt before the meeting and are so focused on it that it impacts your feeling of everything else that happened at lunch. And for the rest of the day, the whole day could be terrible because you got that stain even though the rest of the day was objectively great. Maybe you even got a promotion that day, or a pat on the back, or a bonus. It may pale in the shadow of that tiny stain and you may even resent your boss for calling attention to you on this day when you have a stain on your shirt. I mean, were they doing that on purpose to make you look bad? You can see how the negativity bias can quickly become a spiraling negative nightmare. That is hard to get out of. If you let it drag you down, it won't take long to focus on on only the bad stuff. And because of the focusing illusion and confirmation bias, your brain will find plenty of examples to reinforce whatever bad stuff you're looking for. Knowing that the negativity bias exists and taking a step back to get out of your own way is important as you look at your own behaviors and actions. If you're feeling really grumpy or annoyed or sure something is a lost cause, or that you made a fool of yourself or whatever else, take a step back, take a deep breath, and try to get a different perspective. One great way to do this is to remember a time one of your friends or family members made a mistake similar to this. Did they ever miss a deadline or trip on their way up to the stage, or stumble over their words? Do you still hold that against them in the way that you might against yourself? Probably not. So give yourself the benefit of the doubt like you would if you were your own best friend, and also be kinder to others when they have a misstep, especially those who you don't like all that much to begin with. Because again, confirmation bias and the us versus Them problem. Just knowing that we're all biased to give people like us the benefit of the doubt and not give that to people who are outside our circle of empathy. That could be someone of a different gender or age or background, or from a different company or department, or someone who was rude to us once, or anything else. If that person sends you an email and you think it's really harsh, or they said something in the meeting that has you fuming. Ask if you would feel this way if it came from your best friend. Reenact the meeting and imagine the other person was in their place, your favorite person. Or read through the email as if it was from your bestie. If you're still livid, then there's something to go work on. But if you wouldn't have been mad if it was from someone you have more positive associations with, try to see where there might be one negative that happened at some point that's weighing everything down. If that one thing never happened, or if you were able to put it aside, could everything become easier? I'm not trying to be preachy here, I promise. But do know that you have the control in any situation you're in. You can choose what you focus on, you can choose how you present information, you can choose how you react and what you remember after, and you can help others around you to have a better experience if you choose to keep negativity bias in mind. All right, so we've talked about the four main categories or aspects of negativity bias. Again, those are negative potency, steeper negative gradients, negative dominance, and negative differentiation. But there's one more aspect of that original paper by Rosen and Roisman that is so fascinating and impactful. I found it really interesting to see how few people talk about it when they discuss negativity bias, especially because it opens up their paper and in a very creative way. If you remember, I said the title of their paper was Negativity bias, Negativity Dominance and Contagion.
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So what about the contagion?
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This is such an important piece and it has one of my all time favorite examples and lines because it's very memorable and you instantly get the problem and how this can be applied in other areas.
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Ready?
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Okay. A single cockroach can ruin a bowl of cherries, but an individual cherry will do nothing for a bowl of cockroaches. I mean, does that just blow your mind a bit or is it just me? Now I know if I watched a cockroach walk across my bowl of cherries, or, let's be honest, if it even got near the bowl, was maybe starting to walk up the side, I might be off cherries for years. And I'm definitely not eating any of those cherries. They are all tainted, whether the cockroach actually touched them or not. Washing them might not help either. If you're a fan of the show the League, you may be hearing Nick Kroll's character saying forever unclean right now. So why does one cockroach have so much negative impact compared to the one cherry added to the bowl of cockroaches, which has basically zero impact. That cherry didn't make the cockroaches any more appealing. And a mountain of cherries aren't going to make them better either. There isn't enough positive to outweigh the negatives. The common example that comes up here is when we think about trust or loyalty or being a good person. When you think of reputation, they say it takes a lifetime to build one and a second to break one. You could be friends or business partners or romantic partners with someone for years, decades even, with nothing but great memories and experiences, and then one slip up and it's done. That one negative can contaminate everything else and color your entire perspective of them and everything they touch. Their lifetime of cherries becomes infected with cockroaches. And no matter how many More cherries. They pile on top. This one negative, this memory of that single cockroach could be the thing that defines everything for you if you allow yourself to focus on it. Now, similar to what I've already said as sort of a disclaimer earlier, I'm not telling you who you should trust or align with, not saying who you should forgive and what one thing is enough to undo everything or when to give second chances. I am saying that it's important to realize when negativity bias and specifically contagion could be coloring a lot more than it should. Getting away from humans as our only example, consider this Is there a system at work you tried once that was a royal pain and which you have never tried or given a fair chance to again? Or maybe something you fought against for years? Maybe it's been improved and people tell you that the thing you hated about it isn't even part of their offering anymore, and that it's amazing now but you can only see all the bad aspects of it now. Let me ask you this. Who's getting harmed in this scenario? The system doesn't care if you use it or not. It doesn't have feelings and isn't being impacted by your dirty looks and harsh words. But you may be impacting your colleagues company and your own reputation or status within the company. If you won't let go of that grudge, if you were to approach it and imagine it was made by your favorite company or designed by your best friend, or that you made it yourself, how might your whole world and outlook change if you let go of that one negative thing and let the positives have their day in the sun? What might that do? You can of course see how this applies to people. I'm sure. If someone on your team is difficult or annoying or lazy in your opinion, ask where that comes from and see if there's really a lot of evidence for it, or if you might be having your work clouded by negativity bias. And as always, remember to be aware of your own actions and as well and know that that one thing you did one time that wasn't great, that you might have given yourself the benefit of the doubt for could be something that is weighing you down in the eyes of others. Piling more and more cherries on the cockroach isn't going to help until you address that negative. And don't even get me started on the idea of how many weird bugs touched our food. But we don't care about those because we didn't see them so interesting to consider, but that is a conversation for another day. As we wrap up today's episode, I want you to think about the negativity bias and how it's impacting you in your life and at work. First, let's recap the four aspects and the contagion piece, and then I will recap some examples we've talked about in this episode to get your mind flowing. And I'm going to add one bonus one in there that we haven't talked about yet. So stay tuned. Stick around. Our four categories that are really five are Negative Potency Negatives have more impact on us than positives. Steeper negative gradients. We feel the negatives more intensely and on a steeper incline as the event approaches as compared to an upcoming positive event. Next, we have negative dominance. When looking at an overall experience, the negatives can quickly take over and put the whole thing in a bad light. Negative differentiation because we take more energy to process negative stuff, we will remember that all for longer. Lastly, we have contagion or contamination. One drop of negative can sour a whole pool of positive, but one drop of positive doesn't make the bad stuff better. In the same way, once the positive has been contaminated, it might be irreversible. Now, as we move forward to think about examples, I want you to reflect on how these may have had an impact in your own life and what you can do in your future interactions. First, remember my review at work and how I can still remember the bad thing 10 years later and who said it was. But all the good stuff from a decade has sort of become a blur. Learn from the negatives and let them sink in, but don't let them control you and take over everything. And when you're giving constructive criticism or negative feedback, don't assume everything is going to be rosy soon after. Don't then ask someone to do you a favor or expect they'll be over it in an hour time. The delivery of information and be aware of of how it is presented. What just happened before this? What's coming next? Be thoughtful about that before you give harsh or somewhat less than positive news. Next, when you look at your customer experience, are you in a generally positive area or a more negative one? Are you Disneyland or delivering root canals? Is there a lot of anticipation before the bad? What and how are you communicating in those crucial points on the steep incline to the negative event? How can you make that more positive? What can you share at a different time or in a different way to make everything easier? When you think about presenting changes at work a new system or implementing a new process, adding team members or announcing a merger? What are the negatives you can mitigate before they even start and what cleanup do you need to go back and do what before you ask for anything else and to really dial that home. If you're working on CX or UX or considering the peak end rule, knowing you have a mix of data points, some positive and some negative, and you need to determine where to start, what should you even focus on when you're diving into such a big project? I highly recommend starting with your negative peaks and getting rid of them or reducing them as much as you can. They can really drag the whole thing down in a way that is difficult, if not impossible, to make up. On the positive side, make sure to clear out the cockroaches before you work on finding better cherries. And finally, when it comes to contamination and chances, people you've written off or those who have written you off, consider and reflect a little about grudges, little things that may have contaminated an entire reputation or memory or relationship, and take some time to determine if things need to stay that way. What is it worth to hold on to whatever that is and what might happen if that wasn't in the picture? How are things now and how likely is that original negative really going to be a problem again? And remember, I'm not telling you to blindly trust, become a doormat, and give people umpteen thousand chances who don't deserve it. I'm just suggesting that we all take some time to be thoughtful about our relationships with the people and brands and items and experiences and thoughts in our lives and ask if they are serving us well. If not, consider how negativity bias might be part of the problem and if you want to do anything to change that. All right, now that I've gone through examples of everything we've already talked about, I want to give you that final point of consideration before wrapping up the episode. And this is to really think about the status quo and how the negativity bias, especially around new ideas or opportunities that might be different than what you have done before or spent a lifetime a career building, could be detrimental to your company. Because of the negativity bias, we really love avoiding bad things. We also tend to celebrate when people point out how if we had made that decision, we might have made a mistake and not try new things because of the potential that something bad might happen. Sometimes bad things do happen and we don't need to be reckless. But if we avoid all the things that have risks associated with them. We will not grow or change. And for both people and companies, that's a problem. The most commonly cited case study for negativity bias in this way is Kodak. Kodak was the market leader and had plenty of resources that would have allowed them to innovate and continue to dominate the market. They even already had R and D in the digital space, but they chose to avoid the potential negatives and go all in on what seemed like the safe bet, something they had been building on for decades. Physical Film and Printed photos well, I ask when is the last time you reloaded a camera with film or printed a photo? I'm guessing it's been a while. And depending on how old you are, you may never have had the experience of using a disposable camera or not knowing if you were blinking in the picture or or waiting a week for the blurry, dark photos of your vacation to come back and then having to wait for 45 minutes in line at Walgreens to be disappointed that you had your finger over someone's head or that you forgot to take the lens cap off. Anyway, the point is that Kodak let negativity bias get in the way of their ability to innovate and maintain their massive lead in the market. Same with Blockbuster, who most everyone has heard turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix and so many other cautionary tales out there. Pointing out flaws and ideas isn't always saving you from mistake. It might be saving you from the thing that could change everything for the better if you gave it a chance. What can you take a chance on today?
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So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about negativity bias today? For me, I always come back to that cockroach and cherry metaphor. I mean, it definitely sticks with you, doesn't it? The way this is so viscerally expressive.
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Shows how one small negative can contaminate.
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A whole batch of positives. But that the reverse it just doesn't work. It's a reminder that the stories we tell ourselves and the experiences we create for others are more fragile than we might like to think. From the peak end rule to a Negative contagion There are so many ways this bias influences, perhaps perception and behavior, and that's why it's so important to.
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Be aware of it.
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Whether you're launching a new product, giving performance feedback, managing a tough conversation, or even just writing an email, negativity bias is shaping how it lands. And once you know how this works, it can adjust everything from the timing of your message to the tone of your words to reduce friction and build trust. Now this is not about being fake or overly positive. It's about removing the mental cockroaches before they destroy that whole bowl of cherries. When you understand how the brain responds to negative cues, you can create smoother, smarter, and more thoughtful experiences for everyone involved. That's the real power that we have from applied behavioral economics. So now I'm curious. What part of negativity bias hit home for you? Is it cockroaches and cherries? Like for me? Is it something else? What is something you're maybe going to apply right away? I'd love to hear about it. Please come share it with me on social media. You'll find me as the Brainy biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes to make it easy as well as links for my top related past episodes, books and more. It's all waiting for you atthe brainy business.com 548 and just like that, episode 548 on negativity bias is done. Join me Thursday when I'm joined by Alessandra Di Lorenzo to discuss her book How Ads Shape what We Think and Do. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.
- [36:56]
Podcast Narrator
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.