by William Taboas, M.A. 

It’s easy to notice what goes wrong when something does, but it’s harder for us to notice when things don’t go wrong. Think about Murphy’s Law (Anything that can go wrong will go wrong) and think about how many of us are constantly preemptively avoiding bad things from occurring. Sure, we celebrate our triumphs, but those are typically major. What ever happened to noticing the small triumphs in a day?

We are wired to look for errors and possible calamities in our environment. We notice negative feelings and sensations of discomfort more than positive feelings and sensations. By notice, I mean register and become aware that they are present. We call this a “Negative Bias”. Work by Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman (2001), and subsequent studies, show that humans have a tendency to skew attention towards negative interpretations of events over positive interpretations, when objectively equal negative and positive aspects are present in the experiment. We are also more swayed by adverse events to feel negative emotional states, than swayed by desired events to feel positive emotional states. Thus, it’s hard for us not only to notice the positives, but to feel the positives as well.

And that brings us back to change. If there is something that we want to change about ourselves and environment, we tend to look at things that stay stagnant and bothersome. We also tend to expect that change occurs quickly, and that signs of no change mean signs of a futile effort or impending trouble. That would be our negative bias in full effect, creating an inner monologue of both self-protection and discouragement from potential failures and the negative emotions failure carries. Our negative bias works like a cognitive and emotional double-edged sword.

Knowing your negative bias is half the battle if you want change. It goes without saying that change doesn’t happen alone.  You have to work for it, of course. By accepting that the process of change is always different than expected, and that positive change is equally as important as the negative, you will help change happen. The emotional exercise would be feeling the positive change, no matter how minute. That’s where a lot of the effort will take place: shifting our attention to feel the change we GET, and not the change we think we need.

 

Reference:

Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion.          Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 296-320.

William Taboas, M.A.