Our brains are set to negative thinking. Here’s how to harness negativity to be more positive

Your co-worker surprised you with a chocolate chip cookie, but a teammate took a dig at your report. As the day goes on, you’re more likely to dwell on the criticism than the act of kindness.

Negative events feel more psychologically intense than positive ones, thanks to a cognitive tendency called the negativity bias. That’s true even when events are of equal weight.

“Very simply, bad is stronger than good. We respond more strongly to things that could hurt or harm us than to things that could benefit us,” said Catherine Norris, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Swarthmore College.

Negativity bias is important to human functioning since it helps protect us from harm. But in some individuals, negativity bias can be correlated with stress, depression and anxiety. There are ways to manage negativity bias, experts said, so that it can benefit us.

Negativity bias evolved

Scientists theorize that the negativity bias evolved as a “survival-based mechanism,” Ms Norris said. “Survival is really the top goal of any individual.”

“If you’re walking to get water and you encounter a tiger, it’s a great idea to stay focused on the tiger” and not on the pretty sunset, said Alison Ledgerwood, a professor of psychology at the University of California.

That focus “generalises to any negative information, even when it’s not tiger-level danger,” she said.

Nowadays, most of us don’t worry about being eaten by wild animals but still face threats that can feel overwhelming, researchers said.

“Many people have lost their jobs, and people can’t access health care that they need,” Professor Ledgerwood said. “I would put those kinds of things more at the level of tigers . . . These are really negative things that need our attention.”

Our brains respond more strongly to it

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scan, and other methods, researchers have found that negative images elicit a stronger brain response in subjects than positive ones, Ms Norris said in a 2021 review paper.

What’s more, negative impressions can last a lot longer. People tend to become desensitised when they see an image repeatedly, Ms Norris said. However, with negative images, “the brain stands up and takes notice. It really starts to pay more attention when the same negative stimulus is repeated” over time, she said.

Studies have shown that such negative reactions can remain stable for up to a year.

Some people have more

Ms Norris said that in her research, she has seen a wide variety in the range of negativity bias from person to person

Since the bias may be an evolutionary adaptation, natural selection and variations would lead to differences, she said.

Research shows that, on average, women tend to have a stronger negativity bias, as shown by their more intense reactions to images of mutilations, dead bodies and other highly unpleasant subject matter. In contrast, “males exhibit a smaller negativity bias, possibly encouraging more risk-taking behaviors,” Ms Norris wrote in her review paper.

In hunter-gatherer societies, men were expected to venture out to explore and to protect the group, she said. “They might need to be a little less careful, a bit more curious,” Ms Norris said.

It can be useful

Negativity gets a bad rap, but it can be useful, Professor Ledgerwood said: “Negative feelings contain information.”

Focusing on negative feelings can spur us to solve problems and do things differently, said Emma McAdam, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Provo, Utah.

However, people with “a very high negativity bias” are in danger of “extremely high levels of anxiety,” Ms Norris said.

How to manage negativity bias

It is harder for people to shift away from negative thinking than positive thinking, Professor Ledgerwood said.

“Our research shows that once people think about negative information, that way of thinking about it tends to stick in our minds and resists subsequent attempts to change it,” Professor Ledgerwood said.

Knowing about the negativity bias won’t fix things, she said.

Instead, Professor Ledgerwood recommends that we “channel the negativity into some kind of productive action.” Also, she said, try to balance — not substitute — negativity even with simple measures such as going for a walk.

“It’s important to do both,” she said. “If you just lean into the information contained in the negative and use it to motivate yourself into action, just doing that won’t work. You’ll burn out. So we need to also be adding some positivity.”

How to manage negativity bias

Try to switch your attention to the positive

Ms McAdam said she often sees people mired in negativity. “When they express the problem they’re having, they often use language like, ‘Everything is awful, the world is worse than it’s ever been, my marriage is a complete disaster’,” she said.

For example, if you’re stewing over the belief that your husband can’t do anything right because he forgot to wheel out the trash bins, correct your bias by remembering that he just did the laundry, Ms McAdam said. “We have to start noticing it because there is good everywhere around us. We’re often blind to that because of our negativity bias,” she said.

Make gratitude a habit

Set a time each day to write down a handful of things for which you are grateful, Ms McAdam said.

Naming what you appreciate “is helping to train your brain in a new habit. It’s hard at first, and then the more you do it, the easier it gets, the more automatic it gets,” Professor Ledgerwood said. It “can substantially boost people’s well-being.”

Use the negative to break bad habits.

If you want to change a bad habit - such as quitting smoking, drinking less or cutting your sugar intake — go negative. Norris said her research suggests that “increasing how bad we feel in that situation is more effective in creating behavioural change.”

“If you focus on the fact that cigarettes are addictive, and they smell, and they’re giving you cancer and all of these negative consequences, that will help you to decrease that behaviour and hopefully to end up quitting,” she said.

Connect with other people in a constructive way

“Sometimes when we’re ruminating on negative stuff, we get very self-focused,” Professor Ledgerwood said. Finding ways to help others “can be this shortcut to breaking out of that self-focus” and makes us feel better, she said.

On a broader scale, people can channel negative feelings into positive action, Professor Ledgerwood said. “We can use them to say: ‘There’s a problem. Who else is experiencing this problem? How can I connect with them?’” she said.

“The action part is really important,” she said, “for example, with anger, using it as a motivation to do something about what feels unfair”.