The Negativity Bias

 

Hi I'm Andy Bernstein. In the last video, I quoted George Vaillant from the Harvard Grant Study, who said that, based on more than 80 years and 20 million dollars worth of research, there are two pillars of happiness -- love, and not pushing love away. This has been summed up in some of the reporting on the Grant Study as saying what really matters in life is relationships. But actually, I think that what the Grant Study reveals is more specific than that, and more interesting.

Love and not pushing love away are both important parts of relationships, but they're not equally important, and I want to show you why. Let's say someone says something kind to you. You feel good. You appreciate it.

But now let's say that same person says something offensive. Not only do you feel it, you feel it more strongly than you did the kind thing. The two emotions aren't equal in size.

Here's another example. Let's say you want to lose weight, and you do. You lose ten pounds, and you feel good about yourself.

But now let's say you gain some weight. Not only do you feel bad, you feel worse than you felt happy when you lost weight. You could even gain less — you could gain, say, three pounds. But most people feel worse about gaining three pounds then they felt good about losing ten pounds.

Look at what happens when you see yourself in the mirror. Most people feel worse about the parts of their body that they don't like than they feel good about the parts that they do like.

We see this same emotional pattern in many areas in our lives — relationships, body image, financial losses, social issues. Things that bother us make us feel angry or sad more than things that please us make us feel happy. Psychologists have a term for this. They call it our negativity bias:

Our negative emotions tend to be stronger and last longer than our positive ones.

Given that most of us want to live happy lives, this is bad news. Why would we have a negativity bias?

Well, I'l give you a hint, and you see if you can figure it out.

The human body has roughly 3 genes to taste sweet foods. But do you know how many genes it has to taste bitter foods? Around 25. That's 8 times as many! Why would we have so many more genes to taste things that we don't even like?

The answer is, because bitter things can be poisonous. Plants don't have teeth or claws. To defend themselves from being eaten, they produce chemicals that make other organisms sick. Those chemicals tend to be bitter, and we are really good at detecting them so that we don't die.

So the negativity bias towards bitter tastes over sweet ones has a survival function. You may wish your kids preferred broccoli to candy, but you're fighting against their genes. The only reason your kids exist today is because broccoli tastes bad to them!

But how does this apply to happiness in life?

Well, imagine a time long ago when our ancestors walked over a hill and saw a rainbow. Ooh, that's so pretty.

Then they walked over another hill, and discovered a beautiful field of flowers. Amazing. They spent a few minutes admiring the view (that might be a euphemism).

And then they walked over a third hill, and were attacked by a lion.

If those ancestors survived, their brains forgot all about the rainbow and flowers. Every neuron was laser-focused on the lion. When they got back to their tribe, they told stories about the lion. They wrote songs about the lion. They painted pictures of the lion. It was burned into their brains.

Fast forward to today, and our brains are still incredibly sensitive to threats, whether it's to our actual lives or to our social status. The media know this — negative stories get much more attention. Something terrible happens in this part of the world, we all click to see what it is. Something wonderful happens in that part of the world — it could affect many more people — but it doesn't get reported on, because it doesn't get clicked. We like flowers and rainbows, but we prioritize lions.

The only problem is, lions and poisonous plants aren't really the biggest threats to your well-being anymore. There are big challenges in the world — the economy, the environment, discrimination, polarization, pandemics — but for most people watching this video, you're not immediately under threat of being killed by these things. I don't want to downplay our challenges. People are dying and being killed. But in terms of broad human progress, more of us are more safe now and can live longer lives than at any point in our history.

So what is it that really threatens our happiness now? It's not lions or poisonous plants. It's pushing love away. It's the negative behaviors that weaken your relationships with your spouse or your kids. It's the negative exchanges at family gatherings, at meetings at work, or community events. We've mostly solved for predators and poisons, but we haven't solved for the negativity bias in our relationships, at pushing love away, and feeling unhappy as a result.

So if you want to live a happier life, you need to understand that this bias is real AND you need a way of addressing it. But the key isn't to add more positive, because the negative is so much stronger. What you really need to do is subtract more negative. It's like sunshine and clouds. You don't need to add more sunshine. You need to know how to clear the clouds away.

This is why I am not a motivational speaker, and I don't live in a van down by the river. I'm not interested in exercises that pump you up with positivity, because it doesn't last very long. You try to be positive, to not take things personally, you pump up the music and make a list of things to be grateful for, but then something negative happens, and everything flies out the window. The solution isn't to get even better at being positive. It's to get better at not being negative.

This is what the Harvard Grant Study points to. The happiest people aren't the best at being happy. They're the best at not being unhappy. There's an important difference.

We see this reflected in other longevity studies too. When old people are asked what they wished they had done differently, they don't say, "I wish I had more money." They don't say, "I wish I had slimmer thighs or a six pack." They say, "I wish I had been better at admitting when I was wrong. I wish I had been better at apologizing, or at staying connected to my family member when we had a disagreement." It doesn't go away. It just sits inside of us and festers.

As human beings, we aren't wired for intelligence or rationality. We are wired for strong, loving connections to the tribe that we go through life with. So relationships matter, but even more specifically, the ability to protect and strengthen those relationships, to not push love away, even with adversity, and even with our negativity bias, that's the most important thing.

And that's what this website and process helps you focus on. It's not really about stress. It's about your long-term happiness.

Think about the first worksheet you did on "They should see it my way." The real takeaway value in seeing that "In reality, they shouldn't see it your way at this time" isn't less stress, although that's a nice perk. The real value is that you can repair a relationship, build a bridge, strengthen your connection. But you don't get there by adding positivity. You get there by subtracting negativity and seeing that your own perspective was off.

So stress is just an invitation. It shows you where you're still pushing love away, and where you have room to grow. These challenges in our lives don't go away on their own. They go away through insight, through shifts in your own perspective that then lead to behaviors that drive external change more effectively.

But all of this depends on a skill, not a philosophy. So now that you understand why the most important thing for your long term happiness is knowing how to not push love away, let's keep building the skills that make this practical.