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negativity bias: can we be positive amidst the bleak?

is there a risk that the barrage of bad news can be leading to an unhealthily cynical world view?

by nicholas sokic

may 12 2020

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6 minute read

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negativity bias: how can we stay positive when things look so bleak?

how can we stay positive during such depressing times? stock/getty

in normal times, many of us often find it difficult to find a positive spin on life’s events. in these times full of death and destruction, it’s more than fair if you’re a little pessimistic. in any time, it’s not the best for one’s mental health to remain mired in negativity, so the question then becomes, what is this bias and is there anything we can do about it?

negativity bias is any input that hinders one’s judgement of their current situation. e va best, who in 2018 wrote her psychology master’s thesis on positivity biases in older adults for the université de montreal , compares it to wearing different coloured glasses that impact how you see the world.

“you can automatically see everything a person does — say, a politician — either positively or negatively without taking a moment to really think about what they’re doing and what you personally think about what they’re doing,” says best, now a user research manager at video game publisher gameloft .

younger generations more pessimistic

best writes that children and young adults are actually much more predisposed to negativity bias than the elderly, which depending on the study has ranged from ages 60 to 65. the reason for this is unknown, although it could be evolutionary. she cites one study from the emotion journal that revealed children and young adults who were exposed to neutral faces in pictures were more likely to rate them as negative or at least more negatively than an adult, with the difference even larger compared to the elderly.

maybe this explains the stereotypical self-deprecation of generation z and the millennial generation.

best writes that older adults pay less attention to the negative than the positive, and also tend to rate positive stimuli as more positive and negative stimuli as less negative than younger adults. the major caveat is that those with diagnosed psychopathologies were not included in best’s study.

citing a 2012 study for the journal neuropsychologia , best writes, “in response to negative stimuli, older adults show decreased activation in the amygdala, a brain area involved in emotion and emotional memories. however, in response to neutral and positive stimuli, elderly adults’ amygdala activation pattern does not significantly differ from young adults.”

“this whole system is poised to be a result of all our previous experiences,” says best. “depending on what we pay more attention to and what stimulates us more, what arouses us more, and what we commit to memory more easily, it may colour our future perceptions of things.”

that perception will go further and further into the negative or the positive, depending on your immediate reactions.

for example, someone stuck at home in quarantine will likely feel a little frustrated. maybe they’re anxious because they think they or a family member might have symptoms of covid-19. their internet searches will be worded in a way that reflects these frustrations and anxieties, even if they don’t intend for it to do so. continued research with this mindset will only strengthen it and confirm their beliefs.

negative events can help create positive outlook

to be fair, our current situation is pretty bleak. is there a risk that the barrage of bad news can impact our perceptions later in life, perhaps leading to an unhealthily cynical worldview? apparently not, says best.

“evidence shows that it’s really the opposite and i think that’s the silver lining of our generation. we saw the 2008 crash and now we’re living through the pandemic,” says best. “as we adjust to a new normal, whatever that looks like, this event is always going to be compared to future negative events, and as negative as it is, other things are just going to seem a lot smaller in comparison.”

adults essentially became jaded to these negative attitudes over time. think of your parents or grandparents who lived through any number of hardships like the great depression and world war ii and chances are they look back on those times in fondly, if not neutrally. my own grandparents grew up poor farmers in the former yugoslavia, then fled for a better life in foreign canada. and yet i’ve never heard so much as a mild complaint about those times.

in fact, we may not even have to wait until our elder days for this sunny outlook. best’s young adult study participants were shown negative and neutral stimuli over multiple tests, and within 25 minutes rated that stimuli as less negative and in some cases even positive. the suggestion then is that the positivity bias “may represent the climax of adaptation in emotional development.”

older adults remember negative stimuli even less than their younger counterparts, perhaps explaining nostalgia for ‘the good old days.’

“i even [speak positively] about my teenage years, which weren’t objectively that great,” says best. “technically our memories are inputs too, they’re stimuli.”

while best’s research shows that those in my millennial age group are likely safe from a lifetime of negative thinking, the danger still exists in the here and now, particularly through the idea of priming.

priming is when one stimulus unconsciously influences the reaction to subsequent stimulus. researchers jamie decoster and heather m. claypool conducted a meta-analysis of priming effects published in the personality and social psychology review and found that “negative stimuli showed the greatest priming effects in young adults.” in other words, being constantly surrounded by harbingers of doom will lead you to interpret every piece of news in a negative vein.

guarding against excessive negativity bias is difficult in the best of times. now, it’s practically sisyphean. nonetheless, the best method to buffer ourselves is to figure out what’s contributing to the bias and try to take breaks from it. in our current situation, it’s probably the news that’s doing the lion’s share of the work.

best herself has been taking breaks from the news, but has also been making more conscious decisions in how to positively spend her free time. for her, this means making a list of movies to watch with her partner and watching them early to avoid falling asleep and being more in the moment.

really, it comes down to being more conscious of what you feed your brain. while more time with family members or friends over zoom calls is pretty good for your brain, you also have to keep in mind the content of those conversations and how they might be contributing to your negativity bias.

“whatever behaviour you deposit is stimulus for the person with you and they’re going to react to that, and you can end up feeding into each other,” says best, like if you both are focused solely on the worst aspects of the pandemic in your conversation. “it’s always going to be an effort at first [to change], especially if you’re already used to having this negativity bias. you may have a lot of automatic impulses, it’s hard to avoid. it’ll be a very conscious decision at first but over time it can be solidified.”

these are difficult times for all, but none more so than frontline healthcare workers who live and breathe in the crisis. the canadian psychologists’ association (cpa) has offered more than 200 psychologists to provide free tele-health appointments to any frontline worker who needs it. their promise is to respond to requests within 24 hours.

so even though you reading this helps pay me, i think sometimes it’s a good idea to take a step back from it all and take a more conscious review of your information diet. get some fresh air, chat with your family about non-covid things, take a deep breath. it seems like a tall task, but we’ve accomplished much in our time, and we can certainly do this.