“In this atmosphere of exuberance and ebullience, I am standing tall with the trophy in my hand, relishing the moment. Swelled with happiness and a bit of pride, I am savoring my success. It is a long day – but one to cherish and then out of the blue, I hear a stinging remark hauled at me by one of my friend which instantly took away the sheen of the day. Even after five years, the reminiscences from that day, is not of that happy moment but of a hurt and pain from that remark”.

Does it sounds familiar to you? Does it intrigues you, how a negative thought/incident stays longer and vivid in our minds. As a matter of fact, it is proven and is an established factuality that negative thought outweighs the positive one. In psychology it is termed as Negative Bias, which was researched by two psychologists Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman in 2001, stating that as a human we seem almost evolutionarily hard-wired to be inclined towards negative things.They further enunciated the four elements through which the negative bias manifests.

Negativity dominance : When the combination of positive and negative entities /events are evaluated, the tendency to naturally skew towards negative interpretation of the outcome than to individually sum to arrive at the outcome is termed as negative domination. In Gestalt’s words “the whole is more negative than the sum of its parts”.

Negative differentiation: When our conceptual rendition of negative events are more complex and stimulate a broader spectrum of responses from us, it is termed as negative differentiation. For instance, we have rich vocabulary, varied anecdotes, multifarious maxims to quote,  to express negative thoughts or emotions than positive ones.

Negative potency : The tendency to outweigh negative entities/events, regardless of the fact that positive and negative entities are equal in size or emotionality. As emphasized in one of his popular experiment by Danny Kahneman (an economist & Nobel Laureate) in which participants are asked to imagine either losing $50 or gaining $50.Inspite of the amount being same, the magnitude of the emotional response is significantly larger for those imagining what it would be like to lose the money.

Steeper negative gradient : It refers to the belief that while approaching to the negative event one gets more negative in anticipation than getting more positive while approaching the positive event. For instance, anticipating getting rewarded in a crowd does not make you much elated in comparison to be getting all worked up while contemplating to be rebuked in a crowd.

How can it affect me invariably ? 

Well Negative bias affects each of us adversely in all walks of life, if not restrained. It can be in a workplace, in a personal domain or on a large scale set up.For instance while appraising employee’s performance we skew the evaluation towards negative basing on one error that stands out. Similarly we miss to appreciate the multifarious goodness in our partner but never fail to call out even a trivial slip. Not to mention, how we disregard the years of good work of a philanthropist and judge them basis a single newsfeed on wassup. The worst is to cast our vote for the person, of whom we heard ill from our random coffee chats.The repercussions to any or all of the above incidents are grave in nature. 

Having said about the impact of negative bias, it is pertinent to mention the manifestation of negative bias in man and woman. One way where women are much more likely to internalize the negative emotion in the form of sadness or depression, men are more likely to externalize with outward anger in the form of doing some physical work or discussions. Hence a similar incident of same emotionality evokes different reaction from men and women 

How can I overcome Negative Bias ?

Even though the negative bias is evolutionarily hard wired in us, fortunately we can still override it. We can fight through with our natural tendency of thinking negative by gradually working on ourselves.

Positive Self Talk : “I can’t do this, I should have said this, I should be like him” are the words that we say to ourselves on a daily basis, termed as self talk.Self talk is a critical tool that lays the foundation of our personality. We can start with monitoring our negative self talk throughout the day and then initiating to replace it with positive talk. Fixating on past, and constantly rebuking ourselves does no good than harm. 

Cognitive Restructuring : Every time you interpret any situation or event it is pertinent to be cognizant of the facts not our biases. Make it a conscious effort to reframe the situation in positive light and challenge your negative bias, also termed as cognitive restructuring. This would assist in focussing on other aspects and make you asses the situation with more neutral perspective. 

Savor The Positive Moments : It means to relish the positive moments by engaging fully in the good sensation, filling in happy thoughts and pleasant emotions and make a mental note of the event in greater detail. Replaying the event to capture the essence.This will help in creating positive mental images and feelings in us which will give little room for negatives to dwell on.

Assessing Objectively : Lastly review all the situation, people , incidents objectively. While objectivity diffuses the rollercoaster emotional paradigm it also keeps the anxiety at bay. Being less anxious always gets better outcome. 

Taking a mindful approach towards negative bias helps in combating the ill effects of it however the effort has to be consistent. So we may be evolutionarily hard-wired to focus on negative aspects but it’s absolutely possible to re-wire our brains to adopt more positive frames of reference and boost our well-being.