The Default Pessimistic Brain
“We see what we look for and we miss much of what we are not looking for even though it’s there… Our experience of the world is heavily influenced by where we place our attention. ”
The “dark side” (the negative in our experiences) may not actually be stronger, but because of how we’re built (our tendency to focus on the negative), it seems like it is. Humans come pre-wired for negativity. Our brains are designed for preservation and protection, hardwired to help us survive. The nervous system evolved to help our ancestors make split-second survival decisions: to approach a reward or avoid a danger. A typical day for early humans included foraging for food and procreation, while avoiding tigers and hostile neighboring tribes. Psychologist Rick Hanson describes this approach-avoidance system as pursuing carrots and ducking sticks. Both are essential, he explains, but there is a key difference between a carrot and a stick. “If you miss out on a carrot today, you’ll have a chance at more carrots tomorrow. But if you fail to avoid a stick today – WHAP! – no more carrots forever. Compared to carrots, sticks usually have more urgency and impact” (Hanson, 2014).
As a result, our brains respond faster and more strongly to threats (or unpleasantness) than to opportunities and pleasures. We’re wired to learn quickly from negative experiences and to weigh them more heavily than positive ones. Hanson points out that the amygdala—the alarm center of the brain—devotes about two-thirds of its neurons to scanning for negative events and then quickly stores them into long-term memory. Good events, on the other hand, are much harder to remember. They must be held in awareness for a dozen or more seconds before they are transferred to long-term storage. He also notes that we have the ability to feel intense pain from any part of our body, but intense pleasure is limited to only a few areas. Studies even show that people react to angry faces faster than happy ones, even when the images are flashed on the screen so quickly that only the subconscious recognizes them (Hanson, n.d.).
Hanson observes, “The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones” (Hanson, 2014). As a result of this well-intentioned survival instinct, today’s humans not only overestimate threats and underestimate opportunities, but we also underestimate our own ability to handle these threats and take advantage of our opportunities.
Think about your last commute. Do you remember the hundreds of drivers who politely stayed in their lane, stopped at their red lights, and didn’t run into you? Or do you remember the one person who tailgated you? That’s your evolutionary negativity bias in action. Our brains are determined to keep us alert, anxious, and fixated on the negative. If you pay attention throughout your day, you might be surprised to notice the ways you are wired to focus on the one negative thing among the hundreds of neutral or positive events. Your mind might dwell on a single social slight—“I waited a full minute before that receptionist even acknowledged me”—and overlook or devalue the many positive or neutral human interactions in your day. Fortunately, as we learn to recognize the built-in negativity as largely inaccurate, overblown thoughts from a primitive time, we can more easily devalue them, and act from a more balanced mind setting.
Of course, some of us are more afflicted by the negativity bias than others. You’ve heard of left-brained vs. right-brained people. Jonathan Haidt (2006), author of The Happiness Hypothesis, explains that it has long been known from studies of brain waves that most people show more activity in either the right or left frontal cortex. People who show more activity of certain types of brainwaves in the left side report feeling more happiness in their daily lives, less fear, less anxiety, shame and depression, and they recover more quickly from negative experiences. These differences show up in infancy. Babies with greater right-side activity grow into toddlers who are more anxious in new situations, into teens who are more fearful in dating and social situations, and finally into adults who are more likely to need therapy to help them manage an overactive avoidance system (Haidt, 2006). So, in addition to the built-in negativity bias we all have, some of us face the added challenge of an overprotective helicopter parent—Mother Nature—in the form of a right brain incessantly calling out needless warnings.
So, what does it take to tip the scales from a negative to a positive overall outlook? It would seem rational that someone who experiences one positive emotion for every one negative emotion would feel balanced. But research shows otherwise. People with a 1:1 ratio are often clinically depressed or suffer from personality disorders. Research by Barbara Fredrickson shows that most of us (80%) have a 2-to-1 ratio (2 positive emotions for every 1 negative) and are just doing “okay” in terms of happiness. It’s not until a person experiences 3 heartfelt positive emotions to every 1 negative that they report feelings of flourishing (Fredrickson, 2009). (Take a positivity self test at www.positivityratio.com). And for a relationship to flourish the ratio is even greater. In marital interactions it takes at least five positive actions to make up for the damage done by one negative act (Olds & Milner, 1954). Considering our built in tendency to focus on the negative, it’s clear that effort is required to balance the scales and tip into positive well-being. One study found that people who focused intentionally on the positive developed better coping skills and increased overall well-being (de la Fuente et al., 2021).
Watch this video with positivity expert Barbara Fredrickson explaining the optimal ratio of positive vs. negative experiences for flourishing.