Negativity Bias - Video Transcript

Hey everyone, I'm Kristen, the anxiety therapist and today I'm going to be discussing negativity bias I'll start just by kind of defining what this is and basically our brains are built to respond to negative stimuli more so than positive stimuli. This isn't necessarily specific to people who experience anxiety, but it can be exacerbated in people who experience anxiety because you're already sort of prone to that negative mystic thinking.

So you really have to be careful when it comes to this negativity bias because we do tend to be more influenced by negative information versus positive information. And a perfect example of this would be the news if you are watching or reading or listening to the news. It's so rare that you hear news that's positive and that's really intentional, right? The news programs want to give you that attention-grabbing headline that's going to ensure that you stay tuned to hear more and typically that is going to be something negative because that is what piques our interest.

Same thing if you're driving down the expressway and you see a car accident, that's why people slow down and stop and look because we're sort of drawn to those negative things. So here's a little test for you. Try to think about the last time someone insulted you or gave you negative feedback. Can you remember who it was?

Can you remember where you were the exact words that were said? Maybe what you were wearing at the time or what the weather was like outside and now try to think about the last time you were complemented, can you remember the same things who it was, the exact words that were said, what you were wearing, maybe what time of day it was for most people, it's so much easier to recall the insult or the negative feedback than it is that complement.

And we just naturally tend to filter out the negative information or the negative aspects and pay more attention to those. Um it actually takes 3 to 4 seconds for negative information to be stored in our long-term memory versus a full 12 uninterrupted seconds to store positive information. Uninterrupted meaning that if anything takes your attention away from that positive thing, then it's not going to be stored in long-term memory.

I mean that's a stark contrast when you think about it. So think about how this might impact you on a daily basis and in day-to-day interactions if you're constantly storing these negative things versus the more positive things. So just something to keep in mind. Um you know, I do this too and a perfect example is I'm an adjunct professor, and at the end of each term we get class evaluations.

So I've been teaching for I guess four years now and of all the class evaluations I've received, most of which are extremely positive. I still remember the two, not even tremendously negative comments or feedback, but the two slightly negative comments that students gave me about my teaching.

And so that's an example of negativity bias at play, right, is I don't remember the 99% of positive feedback I've received, but I do remember the 1% of negative feedback I received. So hopefully you found this helpful and you can just kind of become more aware of your own cognition and your own thought processes and try to pick out when you see some negativity bias popping up for you. So I hope you have a great weekend.

I will see you next week.