Understanding our negative bias and what to do about it

?When considering others around us, we can easily fall into the trap of calling them ‘positive’, or ‘optimistic’, or reversely, ‘negative’. The same goes with our emotions and attitudes: joy, curiosity, openness are labeled as positive while anger, fear, sadness are?often?coined as negative.??

This puts a lot of pressure on individuals, because by categorizing emotions and attitudes as positive or negative, the intention to avoid ‘negativity’ is magnified, and the desire to feel ‘positive’ emotions or to adopt a ‘positive’ attitude becomes?a gold standard.?

When we?(inevitably)?feel anger, fear, or any of the likes, we end up judging ourselves for failing to be positive. The same applies for others, whom we also tend to judge when they display an emotion or attitude considered negative.?

But what if we told you that?feeling?emotions and?adopting?attitudes labeled as negative?is not only helpful, but it?is also a?natural?phenomenon??It can be traced back thousands of years,?and?it is called the negative bias.??

What is the negative bias??

The negative bias is a natural tendency to be more sensitive to negative stimuli?than to positive ones, and to sit with the negative emotions they trigger?for a longer period. It is also called the positive-negative asymmetry, and, in other words, we feel more impacted by negative events than by positive ones.??

According to?research, that is why we tend to more easily recall when someone insulted us,?why we?remember?past traumatic experiences more intensely than positive ones, or even why we tend to think about negative things more often than we do about positive ones.??

This bias leads us to pay more attention to things perceived as negative, or to the risks that bad things could happen.?

Let’s take an example: you receive a performance review at work, and it is generally quite positive, both in terms of performance and achievements. The report includes some constructive remarks to help you improve, and you end up fixating on said remarks for the rest of the day.??

Instead of staying with the feelings of gratefulness and satisfaction for the positive comments, you might feel fear to lose your job if you don’t improve in areas to improve, or you could feel anger towards the person who assessed you, thinking that they are unfair.??

Where does?the negative bias?come from??

The short answer is genetics! The negative bias is thought to be a result of evolution. If we go back thousands of years, staying alert, paying attention to risks and threats was a matter of survival. Only those aware of dangers and showing the most caution were likely to survive.???

And the genes of these very attentive people were passed on to further generations until now.??

So next time you feel triggered by a negative emotion, remember that somehow, it is because of your great-great-great-…-great-grandfather, whose life depended on not being smashed by a mammoth.?

How does the negative bias affect us??

The negative bias impacts the way we think, respond, and feel in four main ways:?

1. Motivation to complete a task:?research?showed that people’s motivation will increase when the incentive will help them avoid the loss of something, rather than when the incentive is about gaining something.?
2. Decision-making: because?we tend to pay more attention to negative elements?than positive ones, this can substantially impact the way we make decisions – and their outcomes.??
3. Relationships: the negative bias affects our perception of others and leads us to expect the worst in them. This holds especially true in relationships that have been going on for a while. Said perception can damage trust, a valuable enabler for organizations.?
4. Considering ‘bad’ as ‘true’:?studies?have shown that bad news?tend?to be considered more truthful than good ones.?

greytogreen and the negative bias?

Gaining awareness of our negative bias is very important to understand our reactions to the external world, especially in our interactions with others and within organizations.?

What we perceive as negative can be a blessing in disguise, as it gives us valuable information about what our needs are, and how these are being threatened or fulfilled.??

For example, if you are a leader and you feel that tensions are rising between you and your team, you might experience anxiety, fear that your leadership style is not credible or efficient, or that you are not doing your job well.??

Yet, you have the choice to welcome these feelings, and read the signal that something needs to change to bring the situation to a level of serene communication between you and your team.??

As strong as they are, emotions do not bite and cannot harm you. What you do with them is the cause of harm, or good.?

The greytogreen attitude does not refer to emotions or attitudes as positive or negative: instead, we talk about limiting (grey) and constructive (green) attitudes.?We also acknowledgeAnd we enable you to discover?and practice?a?way to twist?how easy one can switch?from a limiting to a constructive attitude, by reframing the situation?or the emotion.?

Creating this?This?‘timebuffer’ between you and the situation helps you gain clarity and better assess what your next steps and their possible outcomes could be, thereby participating in creating an organization where employees and leaders thrive.???

Are you curious about greytogreen? Find a discovery workshop in your language!?