Memories have the power to bring glimpses of the past into the present. Studies show that many of the negative memories that we have are naturally more impactful to our psyche than positive memories. While positivity in aspects of life is typically the goal, many would agree about how negativity is often more prominent in their minds than positivity. Time and time again, one small negative incident has enough influence to overpower an entirely positive experience when being thought back on. This frequent, subliminal, inclination towards seeking out negativity in every aspect of life is called the negativity effect or more commonly, the negativity bias.
There are different theories about this subject, some putting the blame for the instinctive bias on evolution, some on our human need to adapt, and others even mention age as a contributing factor. An article from the American Psychological Association suggested that negative memories could be remembered easier, and with more precision due to evolution. Since negative emotions may be linked to a potentially threatening situation, these particular events are associated with increased activity in the part of the brain that is responsible for memories. The bad situations stimulate activity in brain centers corresponding to emotion, and the more these centers are active, the more specific the resulting memories become. Positive events do not create the same level of vividness in memories because our brains do not react as strongly to positive experiences as they do to negative ones.
Similar to the previous article, psychologist, Laura Carstensen, states that humans are much more likely to remember negatives over positives because bad memories protect against possible similar events in the future. She proposes we need these memories in such detail to be able to adapt to our environment. Carstensen’s study also makes the interesting note that this subconscious focus on negative rather than positive is less frequent in older generations than it is in younger ones. Carstensen states that people younger than 30 are typically very focused on their future, and therefore intuitively save the negative memories that will help their future selves. The older generations are generally able to focus more on the present, and in turn see more of the positives in life first rather than second.
The Decision Lab, a behavioral science informant website, defines the negativity bias to be “a cognitive bias that explains why negative events or feelings typically have a more significant impact on our psychological state than positive events or feelings, even when they are of equal proportion.” Research justifies how society as a whole tends to automatically give attention to the negative first, over the positive, a process that starts all the way at infancy. The human brain is proven to remember the negative as more influential and spend more time focusing on a truly insignificant negative event. The bias is the cause for why we often seem to learn better from the bad than the good, how one small thing can ruin our entire day, and why first impressions are so important. For example, if your first impression of a new person is not a positive one, it will affect the way you perceive them throughout the relationship. However, it is shown that keeping mindfulness can decrease this bias. Making an active effort to focus on everything good that is going on around you as opposed to the bad is beneficial to your state of mind and perspective on life. There is always something positive to look at and appreciate. We may just have to look a little harder to find it.
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