WSJ won't let me read it without subscribing or signing in. :-(

Still, like you, I am a happy person and rarely hold on to negative thoughts or feelings. I cannot imagine going through life focused on or consumed by negative aspects of situations or people.

Great piece. Thank you, 3katz. As someone who is pretty positive, being around negative people makes me even more vigilant of allowing myself to indulge in that kind of thinking. I grew up around people who thought being negative was being smart.

I disagree but hear me out. This "no negativity" trend America is on is dangerous. It's really taken off the past few years. I have a friend who's really into it, she won't listen to anyone who is experiencing negative happenings in their lives. Oh no, no negativity!

For the longest time the No Negativity attitude sweeping across the land bothered me but I couldn't put my finger on why until I stumbled upon an article about this newish trend.

When people are negative it means they have problems and they need a friend. No negativity means no compassion for others, and extremely judgmental.

Ever hear of the phrase "bitter old lady?" Nobody wants to be around that bitter old lady, she's too negative. But why is she bitter? What happened to her to make her such a bitter/negative person? That bitter old lady or grumpy old man has a story to tell, and probably an incredibly sad or tragic story at that. But nobody wants to hear it because it's negative. Those people need someone to hear them, to have compassion for them, and if they did, then I doubt they'd be negative for much longer.

Now if you're talking about someone in the office who does nothing but gripe gripe gripe, then that's a different story.

I strongly feel if I was in the no negativity camp something bad would happen to turn me into a negative person, but no one will be there for me...cause they're on the no negativity bandwagon. Karma.

Oakley - I bet you weren’t able to read the article. It wasn’t about a “no negativity” trend sweeping the land. It was about our innate reaction to the things that take place around us and how that behavior was of benefit when our society was less advanced but how it can make things difficult in our lives today. For anyone interested who can’t read the article the book comes out next week.

Fascinating article! Worth reading if you can. As for the "bitter old lady," my experience with that is that negative speech can sometimes be nothing more than habit. Mindfulness and appreciation for the good in one's life, and a realization of the power of your words can affect what you choose to say.

Following

I couldn't read it, but it sounds like something I'd like to read. Lately I've been trying to keep these three things in mind before I get all judgy (ie, negative)

I (try) to ask myself if what I am about to say is:

Is it true?

Is it kind?

Is it necessary?

My son lives in Colorado and was telling me that he has a tooth that is really bothering him. My natural inclination would include chastising him for not going to the dentist in way too long. Yes, it is true, but what would that response get me? Or him? I would be on a superior note instead of a compassionate one. Instead, I commiserated, listened and asked him to let me know how it goes with the dentist.

I still say the wrong (negative) thing too many times, but I'm working on it.

Ok, you’ve piqued my interest. Now I have to logon to work to access the WSJ. I have had a fair number of “bad” things occur in my life; a long time ago I read something that resonated. You can’t control everything that happens but you can control how you let things affect you. You choose your reaction. Interested to read your linked article

One of my New Year resolutions is about this. I just got a book yesterday about this as well, I plan to implement a more positive outlook this coming year. It's tricky when you work with people that complain a lot out of habit.

Is there any way to read this piece without subscribing? I'd really like to, as I've been contemplating something along these lines lately.

I googled it and came up with the following. I have a subscription, so I don't know whether it works or not:

"Googling for the article and then clicking on it won’t work anymore

Nor will pasting the URL into a private browsing window

What will work (as of March 2017) is accessing the article through a link on a social media site

Fortunately, you do not need to be dependent on the charity of others in posting links to WSJ articles - you can do it yourself

First, click on to the article in question to get the URL - copy it to your clipboard

Then, post a link to the WSJ article that you want to read as a comment on one of your Facebook posts (making a new post would probably work too, but I’m assuming you don’t want to spam your Facebook friends’ newsfeeds [too much]), and click on it. You will then be able to read the full article

Alternatively, tweet a link to the WSJ article and click on the link in your tweet (thanks to how Twitter works this will spam your Twitter followers’ feeds, so I recommend doing this with your Facebook account)

I have personally tested both these methods and they work. I am not sure if they’ll scale up once you hit 5, 10 or even more articles but the basic idea should still work (if it doesn’t work you could try clearing your cookies or something similar).

Edit: As of November 2017, the WSJ now seems to be tracking how many articles you read using this method.

When the above failed for me, I deleted all cookies from http://WSJ.com and it worked again."

I wasn't able to read the article. Gray, I think those with a habitual negative attitude acquired it after having a life full of bad things happen to them.

When my son was younger we were having a conversation and he told me to be more positive. I explained to him I am a positive person but I'm also pragmatic which could come across as being negative.

Anyone find it ironic that a piece about negativity can only be accessed if you drag out your credit card just to spend a mere $1 to access it?

Trying to find something positive about that.

That's way too much hoop jumping for me, although I would've liked to have read the piece had it been accessible to all. Oh well. Thanks for trying, graywings.

Oak, my MIL had a life of ups and downs, but overall a pretty good life. She was remarkable healthy (lived into her late 80s), was financially secure, and had a loving family. She was a highly negative person. She didn't know how to have a conversation except to complain.

One favorite rant in her later years was that garbage collection had been cut back to once a week. When I countered with the fact that she had very little garbage to put out, she would reply that families with children needed more frequent garbage pickup, or if someone had a crab feast, the remains would smell. We had this conversation probably six times a year; she would call just to rant about it.

If I said, "isn't it a beautiful day!" she would reply, "But it's going to rain later in the week." We could be driving down the road on a glorious day on our way to doing something fun, and still, she couldn't avoid the negative.

I once caught her in a serious moment and asked why she was like that. She said she didn't know. Then she thought about it for a while and said that maybe she was that way because thinking the worst was a way to keep the bad things from happening. How sad is that?

As a child, I had an uncle - a very nice, religious, hardworking family man - who would come to visit and tell negative stories that he had heard on the news. People who had been shot, stores shutting down, illnesses. Even at my young age, I once remarked on it to my sister. He was always full of bad news.

This article resonates with me because I realize how easily I am affected by what I read and hear and see. Several months ago I read a sad story about a mother dolphin, and it kept coming back to my mind for days. I don't watch violence on TV. I work in dog rescue and do not want to hear people's sad stories of their pets. Yet for some reason, people think I need to know what happened 30 years ago to their dog Lucky. I do not.

Okay I think I managed to cut/paste below.

The new year is supposed to bring hope, but too often it feels grim. We resolve to be virtuous—to lose weight, to exercise, to unplug from social media—but we recall past failures and fear another losing struggle. We toast to a better, happier world in 2020, but we know there will be endless bad news and vitriol, especially this election year.

We could use a fresh approach. For 2020, here’s a resolution that could actually work: Go on a low-bad diet.

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.

The negativity effect sounds depressing—and it often is—but it doesn’t have to be the end of the story. By recognizing it and overriding our innate responses, we can break destructive patterns, make smarter decisions, see the world more realistically and also exploit the benefits of this bias. Bad is stronger than good, but good can prevail if we know what we’re up against.

Our brain’s negativity bias evolved because it is a survival mechanism. But what worked for our ancestral hunter-gatherers doesn’t always work for us.

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.

What gave bad its greater power? To investigate, the social psychologist Roy Baumeister (co-author of this piece) and colleagues at Case Western University looked for situations in which bad events didn’t have such a strong impact. They 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.”

But they couldn’t. To their surprise, despite scouring the research literature in psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology and other disciplines, they couldn’t find compelling counterexamples of good being stronger.

Studies showed that bad health or bad parenting makes much more difference than good health or good parenting. A negative image (a photograph of a dead animal) stimulates more electrical activity in the brain than does a positive image (a bowl of chocolate ice cream). The pain of criticism is much stronger than the pleasure of praise. A single bad event can produce lifelong trauma, but there is no psychological term for the opposite of trauma because no good event has such a lasting impact.

The psychologists had discovered a major phenomenon, one that extended into so many different fields that the overall pattern had escaped notice. While writing up the results, Dr. Baumeister happened to visit the University of Pennsylvania and learned that a psychologist there, Paul Rozin, was also working on a paper about this effect, and they agreed to share credit in 2001 by publishing their findings simultaneously. Dr. Rozin’s paper, “Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance and Contagion,” co-written with Edward Royzman, was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review. Dr. Baumeister’s paper, co-authored with Ellen Bratslavsky, Kathleen Vohs and Catrin Finkenauer, was published in the Review of General Psychology and titled simply “Bad Is Stronger Than Good.”

Both are now among the most cited papers in the social-science literature. They’ve inspired psychologists and a wide range of other researchers to conduct hundreds of studies of the negativity effect, discovering it in new places, analyzing its effects and testing ways to exploit it when it’s useful and overcome it when it’s not.

Our brain’s negativity bias evolved because it is a survival mechanism. On our ancestral savanna, the hunter-gatherers who passed on their genes were the ones who paid more attention to threats (like poisonous berries or predatory lions) than to the good things in life. This bias is still useful—one mistake can still be fatal—but what worked for hunter-gatherers doesn’t always work for us.

The urge to load up on fattening calories was useful in lean times on the savanna, but it can lead to obesity and ill health when junk food is available to tempt you all day long. Today we’re assailed around the clock by the merchants of bad. Politicians and journalists tap into primal emotions by hyping threats from nature, technology, foreigners, political opponents—whatever will instantly trigger the brain’s alarm circuits. The presidency of Donald Trump has been a ratings bonanza because it has brought out the worst on both sides. Rarely a week goes by without some new warning that civilization is doomed.

Once psychologists identified the negativity effect, they realized it had been distorting their own profession for a century. Because negative events had stronger effects, these phenomena were easier to distinguish and measure than positive ones, so psychology journals and textbooks had devoted more than twice as much space to analyzing problems than to identifying sources of happiness and well-being. The research was further distorted when it reached the public, because it was filtered through journalists eager for news with the most immediate impact—which, of course, meant bad news.

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. 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:

First, do no harm. We pride ourselves on the many good things we do for our family and friends, or for going the extra mile in pleasing customers and clients, but 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.

By tracking couples over time, psychologists have found that the success of marriages depends mainly on the frequency of negative interactions and how people deal with negativity. In marriages destined for success, people overlook their spouse’s flaws, maintaining what researchers call “positive illusions.” When something goes wrong, they either give their spouse the benefit of the doubt or respond calmly so as not to escalate the conflict. In marriages that fail, people assume the worst and respond angrily—and because bad emotions are so powerful and contagious, a minor argument can quickly spiral into a major fight.

Minimizing the negative is similarly crucial in business. Angry customers can have such a disproportionate impact—especially the ones who post online reviews—that market researchers refer to them as “terrorists.” Research into the varieties of “bad apples” in the workplace has shown that the performance of a team depends not on the average of its members’ abilities but rather on the ability of the worst member. Several stars can’t compensate for a dud.

Remember the Rule of Four. Many studies—of spouses’ interactions, people’s diaries, workers’ moods, customers’ ratings—have shown that a negative event or emotion usually has at least three times the impact of a comparable positive one. So to come out ahead, we suggest keeping in mind the Rule of Four: It takes four good things to overcome one bad thing.

This is a rule of thumb, not a universal law of nature. It doesn’t apply to every person in every situation, but it’s a useful gauge of well-being and progress. 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. If you have four good days at work from Monday to Thursday, that’s usually enough to make up for a bad Friday. (Obviously, that 4-to-1 ratio wouldn’t be much comfort if on Friday you get fired, but that wouldn’t be a typical week.)

Keep that ratio in mind when considering the impact of your actions. If you’re late for one meeting, you won’t redeem yourself by being early the next time. 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.

I have to agree about the 'habit' thing, when it comes to some people and their negative attitudes. IMO, it can also signal a lack of self awareness. Negative thinking is also a habit, not just talking.

I still recall meeting an elderly woman many years ago who began every statement with "No", regardless of what she was talking about. I found that remarkable, because she seemed a rather cheerful person.

In my work with children & the public in general, we've been encouraged to make a 'sandwich' when presenting something unpleasant - for example when a child got in trouble, say something nice, complementary about their kid, then the bad news, then conclude with something else that's positive. Over the years, I've really gotten into the habit of saying positive things about kids to their parents/guardians - even the troublesome kids. Often it's some cute, funny or nice thing they did that day.

And I learned long ago from a book called 'Roger's Rules For Success' not to bad mouth others behind their back. It only makes you look bad, not them.

I can't access the article either, but $1 for 2 months looks like a good deal - as long as it doesn't automatically subscribe you when the deal expires. Will look @ it later...

carol - I cut and pasted the article above so no need to subscribe : - )

I couldn’t access the article either but I can get the gist of what it is trying to say. Would love to read it though. My (now deceased) ex-MIL was the same way, commenting negatively about almost everything. I blamed it on the fact she grew up in a very large family with a lot of sisters during the depression. In adulthood, she lived a good, healthy, financially secure life and had little to complain about. When she got together with her sisters, it was a contest as to who could out-complain each other, except for the youngest one who was normal and happy.

My DD, who works in the ER as a NPR, says Christmas time is the worst for random people showing up in the ER for no apparent reason. She attributes it to loneliness. And some of that loneliness is because the person complains about everything, and she is quite sure their family members get tired of hearing it.

Outside - see above - I cut/pasted the article so you can read it.

3katz, I’m not seeing the cut and pasted article. Can you please tell me where to find it?

Thanks!

3katz, me either.

Huge long post above caroleb and below graywings. Am I the only one who can see it?

I do not see anything between graywings' and my posts.

It may have been flagged.

Copyright violation?

Nope, I don't see it either.

It's a long article but a good one. I'll do an excerpt:

...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.....

Studies showed that bad health or bad parenting makes much more difference than good health or good parenting. A negative image (a photograph of a dead animal) stimulates more electrical activity in the brain than does a positive image (a bowl of chocolate ice cream). The pain of criticism is much stronger than the pleasure of praise. A single bad event can produce lifelong trauma, but there is no psychological term for the opposite of trauma because no good event has such a lasting impact....

Our brain’s negativity bias evolved because it is a survival mechanism. On our ancestral savanna, the hunter-gatherers who passed on their genes were the ones who paid more attention to threats (like poisonous berries or predatory lions) than to the good things in life....

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. 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:

First, do no harm. We pride ourselves on the many good things we do for our family and friends, or for going the extra mile in pleasing customers and clients, but 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....

Remember the Rule of Four. Many studies—of spouses’ interactions, people’s diaries, workers’ moods, customers’ ratings—have shown that a negative event or emotion usually has at least three times the impact of a comparable positive one. So to come out ahead, we suggest keeping in mind the Rule of Four: It takes four good things to overcome one bad thing....

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. Penalties are usually more effective than rewards at spurring students and workers to improve. They’re also more effective in motivating sinners to repent, which is why hell-fearing religions have historically grown faster than ones preaching a benevolent message...

See the big picture. Just about every measure of human welfare is improving except one: hope. The better life gets, the gloomier our worldview. In international surveys, it’s the rich who sound the most pessimistic—and the worst informed. The global rate of poverty has declined by two thirds in recent decades, but most people in affluent countries think it has remained steady or gotten worse. Crime has plummeted in the U.S., but most Americans think it has risen because they see so much mayhem on their screens.

Thanks Annie - looks like people can see yours. I was skeptical that I could paste in such a large amount of text but when I could see the post I thought it worked. How weird that I see it but apparently no one else does.

Yes, thanks, Annie, for copying, and thanks, 3katz4me, for sharing the article in the first place.

Cautiously raising my hand here as someone who is naturally negative. Much of it is a genetic predisposition, and I have to work hard to tame it. For those who believe happiness is a choice, it is not, believe me. One's mindset is not simply a choice. If it were, we'd all just be happy.

It's taken me years to recognize what triggers my negativity, and how to exercise my mind to bring about a more positive focus. It's a lot of work. (eta writing this post while recognizing my first reaction above was negative. See? It's not a natural reaction to be happy.) But I do relate especially to the first and last points above. Especially in parenting, I was fortunate enough to learn early on that my children responded better to positive reinforcement. Now they are young adults, and I'm grateful that if they've inherited my negativity, I've at least shared with them some tools to manage it.

Also, seeing the big picture really is useful to me, too. I agree that, even though media exposes us to more negative stories and images than positive ones, our world today is much, much better than it has been in the past. I can think of a thousand reasons why. I'm leery of those who speak of "the good ol' days." There were many things wrong with those good ol' days that selective memory forgets.

Regarding social media, I've said this before, but if you curate what you expose yourself to, social media can be wonderfully positive. There are a lot of people out there putting out positive, uplifting and inspirational content. And many of them are young people who will be carrying the world they've inherited from us. I choose to support them.

Great post, Feathers.

Jo

Thanks 3katz, for starting this post -and for all the important contributions from others. Until a few years ago, I was always a hyper-positive, resilient, enthusiastic person -not purposefully, it was just my natural, everyday state of being. I've begun to recognize how much I've changed in this regard over the last few years. For a good five years now, maybe longer, I've been struggling with insomnia -which has been a huge diversion for me, as I was always a person who could quite literally fall asleep anywhere. I think there is a link between my lack of quality sleep and the restless negativity that has somewhat taken over my mind. I'm just not certain how to fix it. I'm scared of getting dependent on sleeping pills, and I've read enough to know that sleeping pills really don't put you into a true sleep state so much as sedate you, which has a very different effect on the brain.

Bestyears, I think you should start a new thread on insomnia. I believe there are others here who struggle with it as well and may have some helpful suggestions for you. Hope you can find some solutions.

I believe that it's the amygdala that is the center for our fear & negativity-based orientation. I recall some research pointing to this, finding that a more developed amygdala tends to correlate with a more conservative mindset, which makes sense, since being conservative (not necessarily politically conservative) correlates with being more averse to change and having a heightened perception of potential threats.

This is all fascinating, compelling, thought-provoking stuff.

I think this probably goes hand-in-hand with having a natural disposition towards negativity (which I do - big surprise/* not! *), but lately I've been thinking about my tendency to attribute negative intent to the action of others. Someone driving erratically or mindlessly? They're selfish. They meant to punish me by cutting me off like that. An acquaintance just ignored me? They're mad at me. They don't like me anymore. They're rude and self-absorbed.

Of course, this is absurd. There are any number of reasons and scenarios for why others behave as they do. That bad driver may be very late to work and afraid they're going to be fired. They may be distracted because a loved one just received a dire diagnosis. The "rude" acquaintance who doesn't like me anymore might be so preoccupied with something that goes way beyond our relationship that they honestly didn't even SEE me.

I can't begin to tell you how much of my own peace of mind has been whittled away by having such a mindset, and I am sick of it. How to change it so that I more readily see another side to the story I'm writing in my head about a situation is another matter entirely, though. It just does not come naturally at ALL, and I really want to find out how to develop "seeing the bright side" as a skill. Because for some of us, I believe that's what it must become, since coming by it naturally ain't ever gonna happen.

I can see the cut and pasted article that 3catz4me posted.

I can see the article now too. Very interesting!

Yes - it's visible to me now as well.