Negativity Bias

Bad is stronger than good. Our brains process negative stimuli more deeply, remember them more vividly, and weight them more heavily in decision-making than equivalent positive stimuli. Baumeister et al.'s 2001 review found that the brain processes negative events approximately five times more thoroughly than positive ones. This was adaptive: in an environment where missing a predator was fatal while missing a berry was merely unfortunate, threat detection deserved priority processing. Today it manifests as: why one critical comment ruins a day of compliments, why losses hurt twice as much as equivalent gains feel good (Kahneman's prospect theory), and why news is dominated by disasters.