Stress on Linkedin: The Negativity Bias

On Monday evening I decided to have a browse through my Linkedin newsfeed

Sitting prominently and "Trending" in my local area was a post titled "Smart Husband". With over 1k likes and 100 comments, I thought that this would be interesting. It was interesting, but not in the way I anticipated.

The post was nonsensical, with a strongly misogynistic undertone

Despite this post having absolutely no business value at all, the string of comments from people complaining about it being on Linkedin had clearly given it the desired effect: getting people to react, and thus share it on their newsfeeds. The negativity bias is well documented. Research by Theresa Amiable at Harvard Business School found that people responded with three times more energy to setbacks than they did when something positive happened to them. This is why some people live in an almost constant state of drama and negativity: it surrounds us everywhere on our media channels.

Now ask yourself when was the last time you heard something on the headline news that uplifted you

Even our headline news is in alignment with a negativity bias. Incredible, uplifting things and events are happening all over the world but they are not newsworthy because certain words are designed to trigger strong emotional responses: war, death, rape, paedophilia, racism, sexism. Throw any of these into a conversation and watch people light up. These words are like a trigger to negativity for most. Conversely, mention love, understanding, cooperation, peace, alignment and the average person may not change their energy or mood much, as it is not deemed newsworthy to our big media sources.

How you react to negativity is a choice

Whilst there are now over 1.3k likes on the nonsensical smart husband post and over 150 comments, all this post proves is that where there are a pool of people who love to complain, you will always find another pool of people who love triggering these reactions. If you truly find posts on Linkedin so abhorrent, would it not be best for you to simply ignore them?

For the record, I did comment on the smart husband post, thanking everyone who had contributed to it for bringing it to my newsfeed, and giving me the subject for this article!