As children, we are often told that sticks and stones can break bones, but words can never hurt.
However, with experience, adults understand that this old proverb is far from true.
While physical injuries can take weeks to heal, negative comments can leave scars for life.
Whether it is a relaxed criticism by a teacher at school or a mean comment thrown in the heat of an argument with a friend or lover, we tend to remember criticism much better than positive comments.
And this is due to a phenomenon called negativity bias.
In fact, all a series of complex effects can be explained by this bias, which is the universal tendency for negative emotions to affect us more strongly than positive ones.
It causes us to pay close attention to threats and exaggerate dangers, according to Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at the University of Queensland and co-author of “The Power of the bad and how to overcome it” (The Power of Bad: And How to Overcome It).
Alert systems
While focusing on the darker side of the world around us may seem like a depressing prospect, it has helped humans overcome everything from disasters to plagues and wars, by being better prepared to face them (although there is evidence that optimism can also help protect us from the stress of the situation). extreme conditions).
The human brain evolved to protect our bodies and keep us alive.
And it has three warning systems to deal with new dangers.
There is the ancient basal ganglia system that controls our fight or flight response.
The limbic system that triggers emotions in response to threats to help us to understand the dangers.
And the most modern prefrontal cortex, which allows us to think logically in the face of threats.
“Our ancestors who had that bias they were more likely to survive,” says Baumeister.
Humans are hardwired to look for threats and, at just eight months, babies will turn more urgently to look at a picture of a snake than a friendlier frog.
(Photo: GETTY IMAGES)At the age of five, they have learned to prioritize an angry or fearful face over a happy one.
Baumeister says that focusing on problems first can be a good strategy.
“First get rid of the negatives and solve the problems. Essentially, stop the bleeding.”
But while focusing on the bad can keep us safe in extreme situations, the negativity bias can be useless on the day to day.
Baumeister believes that until we learn to nullify the disproportionate impact of the negative, it will distort our view of the world and how we respond to it.
Newspapers and news
For example, life tends to look bleak between the pages of a newspaper.
Journalists are often accused of chasing bad news because they sell newspapers and attract viewers.
(Photo: GETTY IMAGES)
This may be partly true, p But researchers have shown that readers are naturally drawn to dire stories and are more likely to share them with others
Rumors about potential dangers, even if unlikely, are spread among people much more easily than rumors that could be beneficial.
In a study, scientists at McGill University in Canada , used eye-tracking technology to study which news volunteers paid most attention to.
They found that people often chose stories about corruption, setbacks, hypocrisy, and other bad news, rather than positive or neutral stories.
People who were more interested in current affairs and politics were particularly likely to choose bad news, and yet when asked, these people said that they preferred the good news.
What we read and see in the news can increase our fears.
For example, our fear of terrorism is pronounced despite the number of people killed by terrorist groups in recent 20 years in the United States is less than the number of Americans who have died in their bathtubs during the same period, Baumeister explains in his book.
Negative emotions last longer than happy ones
Although worrying about a hypothetical but horrible situation can make us fearful, a single small bad experience AI can have a disproportionate impact on our entire day.
Randy Larsen, professor of psychology and brain sciences at the University of Washington in St. Louis, reviewed the evidence suggesting that negative emotions last longer than happy ones.
Discovered that we tend to spend more time thinking about bad events than about good ones.
Which may help explain why embarrassing moments or critical comments can haunt us for years.
It can be hard not to dwell on hurtful comments from a lover, a family member or a friend.
“I think negative comments from people we love and trust have more impact than those from strangers,” says Baumeister.
This is partly because we have expectations of how our friends and family should behave towards us.
In some cases, negative comments from loved ones can lead to lasting mental wounds and resentment that can cause relationships to break apart.
Felix Baumgartner, the first man to break the sound barrier. (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)University researchers of Kentucky, in the United States, found that relationships are rarely saved when individuals ignore relationship problems to remain “passively loyal”.
“It is not so much the good and constructive things that couples do or don’t do for each other that determine whether a relationship works, but the destructive things they do or don’t do in reaction to problems“, they said.
Another study, which followed couples for more than 10 years, showed that the extent to which they expressed negative feelings toward each other in the first two years of marriage predicted whether they would break up.
Couples with higher levels of negativity were divo
The negativity bias explains why many of us can be guilty of taking our relationships for granted when they are going well.
But we are quick to notice imperfections and even turn minor issues into major ones.
Felix Baumgartner used visualization techniques to help him get past his thoughts negatives during his unprecedented parachute jump. (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)The effect of social networks
Criticism too they are amplified when they arrive in large numbers, making social networks a potential amplifier of negativity.
Despite having the best-selling album of 2019, Billie Eilish told BBC Breakfast that she avoids looking at the comments.
“They were ruining my life,” he said. “The cooler things you can do, the more people hate you. It’s crazy. It’s worse than ever.”
Pop star Dua Lipa and former Girls Aloud member Nicola Roberts are other celebrities who have spoken out about the impact of trolling.
Baumeister warns that we don’t have the ability to deal with negativity on social media, because our brains evolved to heed warnings from a nearby community of hunter-gatherers rather than hundreds or thousands of strangers .
“So hearing negative things from a large number of people has to be devastating”, he says.
Of course, the impact of being trolled online or criticized by a friend varies from person to person.
Billie Eilish prefers not to look at the comments on the networks. (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)
The “positivity bias”
But receiving, internalizing and reinforcing any negative feedback can increase stress, anxiety, frustration and worry, says Lucia Macchia, a behavioral scientist and visiting fellow at the London School of Economics.
“Dealing with these negative emotions has a great impact on our body, as they can even create and exacerbate physical pain ”, he adds.
Dozens of studies have shown that people tend to look on the bright side as they age.
Scientists refer to this effect as the “positivity bias” and believe that we start to remember positive details more than negative information from middle age.
Baumeister believes this is because we need to learn from failures and criticism in our youth, but that need lessens as we age.
Nevertheless, negative comments can be harmful at any age, especially at times when we are particularly impressionable or vulnerable.
“When you are already depressed, it is more difficult to recover , so it’s not a good time to get negative feedback,” says Baumeister.
A hotly debated topic is whether people with certain personalities are more prone to negativity than others, says Macchia.
But a recent study found no “consistent evidence” of a relationship between a person’s personality traits or political ideology and negativity bias.
Take advantage of your benefits
“We are all sensitive to negative comments in the sense that there are no ‘stronger’ personality traits. We must bear in mind that everyone receives negative comments and that can help us deal with them”, he adds.
Furthermore, that “could be a good strategy to protect our own mental health“, he says.
“Another A useful strategy could be to consider that the comments have more to do with the person who makes them than with the person who receives them”.
By recognizing the negativity bias, we can nullify the undesirable responses and even take advantage of its benefits.
Singer Dua Lipa has also spoken out about the negativity on social media. (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)
For example, Shelley Taylor, a professor of social psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), has shown that women with breast cancer sometimes form optimistic but unrealistic beliefs to help them cope.
These “positive illusions” are associated with mental and physical health benefits, suggesting that they can help us focus in times of need.
Minimization
Taylor’s work also shed light on a commonly used against negativity, called minimization, which is our ability to “reduce, minimize and even erase the impact of that event”.
For example, cancer patients in the Taylor study were sometimes compared with women who were worse than them, to make their problem seem smaller.
Professional daredevil skydiver Felix Baumgartner may not be someone you would imagine needing to use minimization techniques to face his fears.
But Michael Gervais, a psychologist who works with Olympic athletes, used them to help Baumgartner achieve his goal of becoming the first skydiver to break the sound barrier.
(Photo: GETTY IMAGES)According to the interviews he gave, Baumgartner was afraid of being trapped in his specially designed suit.
Instead of seeing him negatively as a potential prison, Gervais taught him to vis ualize how the suit could turn him into a superhero, amplifying the benefits and lessening the drawbacks.
Using a combination of breathing techniques and a form of cognitive behavioral therapy, Baumgartner was able to build his resilience in the suit, fulfill his goal and become “Fearless Felix”.
Few of us will share Baumgartner’s lofty ambitions, but we can all learn from him.
By nullifying the negative and accentuating On the positive side, we could have more possibilities of achieving our dreams.
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