Hello, thanks for listening to this Darma podcast. I hope you consider that in accordance

with the Buddhist tradition all of my work as a teacher is offered without charge and

supported entirely by donations only. If you'd like to support this work you'll find a

paypal button on darmapunk NYC.com. So what is negativity bias? Well, it's the

ingrained tendency to focus and dwell on negative experiences rather than

positive ones. We feel the sting of criticism more than we feel the joy of praise and attention.

Negativity is a magnet for memory formation.

It is a glue for our attention.

We spend longer periods of time looking at negative images and negative facial expressions than

positive ones. If you show someone five images of people with negative expressions, five images of people with

positive expressions, and five images of people with neutral expressions, or weeks later, present the test subjects with hundreds of images.

They'll almost uncannily be able to pick out the five negative images they previously saw,

perhaps one of the positive and none of the neutral.

Given an array of the neutral adjectives to describe a complete stranger studies show that we give greater weight to the bad negative adjectives than the positive.

We tend to believe the criticism of others is more accurate than the praise we hear about others.

Bad news sells more newspapers, it gets more clicks on websites, it gets more TV views.

In fact, there's even a saying,

if it bleeds, it leads.

Because nothing grabs our attention faster than negative stimuli.

So why is it that we have such a predilection towards the negative, towards bad news, towards a dark take on the world?

Why is it we're so quick to believe

that each generation after us is getting worse?

...