Is it Natural to be Negative?

0:06Welcome to today's podcast episode of the mindset mentor I am your host Rob dial if you have My name is Rob Dial. You can subscribe to me there. Today, we're going to be talking about your brain and how it is natural to be more negative to positive. And so we're going to talk about why it's natural to be negative. But I'm also, don't worry, going to talk to you and teach you how to stop being so damn negative. And so first off, I want you to understand something real quick before we go any further. You're a human. You are an extremely, extremely complex being. And even though you think you know yourself, you think that you know yourself, you will have really complex systems that are built into your brain that probably go completely under your subconscious and you're unaware of them.

1:08There's a complex symphony in emotions and perceptions and unconscious cognitive processes that happen in less than 100 milliseconds. milliseconds. You have your past, you have your traumas, you have things like your parents and what they said to you when you were younger, and you have good relationships of your past, you have bad relationships of your past, you have good relationships you're in now, and you also have bad relationships that you're in now. And all of these cause you to react to the world in less than 100 milliseconds sometimes. And one behavioral and cognitive phenomenon that exists out there that unconsciously affects how you interpret the world and react to all of your surroundings is something that's called the negativity bias.

1:52And we're actually going to go through the negativity bias, what it is psychologically, what it is, what it does to you, and then how to actually make sure that you overcome it in your life. So what is the negativity bias? Well, the negativity bias has been known for a really long time, but it really started to get researched much deeper in psychology in 2001 after there was a study that was done by Paul Rosen and Edward Roisman. And so they defined negativity bias as the universal tendency to attend to and learn from and to use negative information far more than positive information in your life.

2:30And so this study that they did uncovered several examples of the negativity bias. One of them that's really interesting is something called the loss aversion, where there's a psychological impact of losing something is roughly twice as powerful as the effect of gaining the same thing. And so they found that in risk perception, when you're looking and seeing if there's any risks out there in the world before you go do something, that negative information about potential hazards greatly overshadowed positive information about the benefits when you're considering doing something. So if you take a step back and you think about that for a second.

3:06When you're thinking about building your business, when you're thinking about creating the life that you want, when you're putting all of your goals out there, negative information about the potential hazards of going for what it is that you want greatly overshadow all of the positive information, all of the positive benefits when you're considering doing something like going for your goals, asking somebody out, trying to create that business. And so let's try to understand the negativity bias, what it is, why it exists and how to get past him. So in psychology, in cognitive neuroscience, the negativity bias also makes you have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared to positive ones, aka you remember things that are negative in your past way more than you remember the positive things in your past.

3:52When you look back into your past and you remember growing up as a kid or remember being in a relationship with your ex, whatever it might be, you're more likely to recall the negative things than the positive ones. You're more likely to notice and pull out all of the negative information and stimuli in a situation more than the positive ones. You are more naturally wired to be negative than to be positive. It's a natural thing for humans. And it's natural for us to pay more attention to a negative experience and to remember that negative experience way more vividly. And if we don't pay attention, those will actually influence the way that we act.

4:31And so when we say, hey, this is a goal that I want to set for myself, and we immediately like, that's exciting. And then we feel this feeling of hesitancy and fear and doubt and negative self-talk that usually comes in because your brain immediately goes to all of the negative potential outcomes that could come up in the future. You're focusing on the negative more than you're focusing on the actual positive. And then so scientific studies suggest that negative events are more potent and dominant during your cognitive processes like learning and memory. This means that you're more likely to remember and be affected by, like for instance, criticism from somebody more than a compliment.

5:12Like I know a lot of people that I've asked this question to when I run an event or when I have people in front of me and I say, who has, raise your hand if you have trouble taking compliments from people. And most people do. Why is that? Because we, it's a lot easier for us to think negatively about ourselves than it is positively. And so it causes what's called cognitive dissonance. When someone gives you a compliment, there's dissonance. It doesn't really make sense to your brain because a lot of times people are thinking so negatively about themselves. And if you're thinking negatively about yourself and someone says something positive, there's a part of your brain that's like, oh, what the fuck?

5:46This doesn't make any sense. and it's harder for us to actually let that seep into our subconscious, right? So it's harder to take a compliment, but it's much easier to remember criticism or to be affected by criticism more than it is to be affected by a compliment. And that's why the news is so negative because they know that. Because a negative news story will affect you more than a positive news story or a traumatic event will affect you much more than a joyful one. So then you take a step back, and for someone like me who constantly thinks about humans, psychology, where did this come from?

6:22Why does this make sense? Why is this negativity bias built into the human system? Like, why is it there? And it makes a whole lot of sense if you, I usually take a step back and I think of like cavemen and cavewomen. Negativity bias is super easy to understand when you think in the context of evolutionary psychology. When you look through the lens of our ancestors, it makes sense to understand why they were more tuned to negative. They were more tuned to threats and dangers more than they were more tuned to having fun and finding joy in their life. I don't think people really put themselves into our ancestors' shoes or sandals or bare feet, I guess you could say, enough.

7:05Like we think, oh yeah, they probably had like a hard life. It was probably not that easy, all that stuff. But our ancestors, like If you go back far enough, they were constantly trying to survive. They didn't have grocery stores. They didn't have, you know, Instacart. They didn't have grocery stores. They had to search for food every single day. Sometimes they would go days without eating. They had seen people in their tribe die of starvation. They had to fend off animals. They saw people that they had in their tribe die of starvation, get eaten alive by tigers. of course it makes sense why they would be constantly looking for threats aka negative stuff why when we look into our future at our goals and what we want to create why we would be constantly looking for threats because nowadays you can go to a grocery store you live in a house you have water you don't have those same threats but to our ancestors a heightened sensitivity for negative stimuli was extremely beneficial for them in navigating the daily dangerous environment they literally had to be in every second of the day.

8:10And this might be one of the most important systems, the negativity bias, one of the most important systems that was built into the brain to help early humans avoid predators and harmful situations. And focusing on the bad more than the good was needed 200 ,000 years ago. For our ancestors, remembering a good event could bring about a little bit of an improvement in their condition. Oh, I remember two weeks ago. I don't know if this is how cavemen talk. Oh, I remember two weeks ago when I, you know, took that bull down and fed the entire family and fed the entire tribe. Like remembering the good event would be great and stuff.

8:46That's fine. But missing a bad event, like bad, for our ancestors could have been really fatal consequences that they have. So that's why with evolutionary pressures, really what it did was our brains, our brains, like I was a caveman, our ancestors' brains really noticed and tried to avoid and remember bad events. Now it was good for them, but in modern day, we got to learn to reprogram that shit and get some of the negativity out of us. Otherwise it can really ruin our lives because we don't have the same threats. You know, you could literally sit in your house. I say this all the time. You could sit in your house, order Instacart, order Amazon, have water, and you would never have any real threats ever.

9:32Our ancestors didn't have that. We don't have the same threats, but the part of the brain that creates all of those threats and searches for the threats still exists. It's called the amygdala. And just because it doesn't have to worry about lions and tigers and bears, oh my, anymore, doesn't mean that it's inactive. Oh yeah, no, there's no threats. Oh yeah, no, the amygdala doesn't work anymore. It's just, it's inactive. No. When problems don't exist, it will create problems. It will worry about the future. It will focus on what you said incorrectly at the party. You ever done that before where you go to a party, you have a good night, and you're like, I feel like I looked like an idiot when I said that one thing to her.

10:11There was that guy, and he was a really influential person and successful, and I was trying to impress him, and I said something that I think was stupid. Even though you had an amazing life, you focus on that one freaking thing that you said, and you focus on what you said incorrectly at the party. And then you start to think that your friends and family will judge you if you get a new job, or if you decide that you want to post something on Instagram about how you're going to be a fitness coach or whatever it might be. Your brain is constantly still looking for those negative things. It's constantly still trying to find those negative things.

10:44It's constantly going. You cannot turn it off. So if we can't turn it off, we could either be a slave to it or we can learn how to work with it. And in the negativity bias, it plays a massive role in how we make decisions and perceive our risks in our lives and what could possibly be coming up. And when you really start to understand people, you understand that people really do things for one of two reasons, sometimes both reasons. Number one is to get pleasure. People will do things to get pleasure or number two, people will do things to avoid pain. And if you've been listening for the past 11 minutes, it should come to no surprise to you, which one of those is stronger as far as a motivation for people.

11:25Sure. Do we want pleasure? Yes, but it is like 10 times more. We will do things to avoid pain more than we will to avoid pleasure. And people are generally motivated trying to, by trying to avoid pain in their life than they are by pursuing pleasure. There was a 2001 study called Bad is Stronger Than Good that discovered that people were more likely to invest more of their resources to avoid negative experiences than to pursue positive experiences. This is why we tend to overestimate the likelihood of negative events happening, like accidents or illnesses or being rejected or being judged. It's because we look into the future, and instead of seeing what amazing things could happen, we tend to look into the future and immediately go to negative.

12:08of fear, fear, fear. I could be, this could happen to me. This could happen to me. And instead of pursuing joy, we start seeing all the things that could be bad in the future. And we just decide, you know what, I'm not going to go for it. It's too risky. And then we underestimate all the positive outcomes. And this is really key to understand because it shows you that no matter how badly you want something, if you want to be wealthy, if you want to be happy, if you want to build a business, if you want to ask that person out, no matter what it is, you're more likely to see the bad that could happen in the future more than the good if you're not being intentional to search for the good.

12:41It's why most people don't take action towards the life that they want because they're being very risk adverse. They're seeing all the bad that could possibly come up. They're not seeing a whole lot of the good. They're more likely to see the bad in the future. Therefore, they'd rather stay where they are instead of going and doing something that is bad because all you're seeing is bad. Sound familiar to you? You ever done this before in your life? and it's really important if you remember this when you're looking into your future and you're trying to see something that you want to create is to actually be intentional about paying attention to what possible opportunities could be in your future versus what possible struggles could be in your future because will there be struggles yes will there be opportunities yes which one do you want to focus on you know which one your brain's going to want to focus on so if we want to be more intentional we have to be more intentional about thinking about the positive stuff.

13:29And this will also happen and it tends to happen a lot and affect your personal relationships as well. Negative interactions, criticisms, or conflicts tend to have a much, much stronger impact on our emotional state and the perception of relationship than positive ones. You've done this before, haven't you? Something happens with your significant other, with your spouse, with your friend, wherever it is, and you're doing the dishes two hours later and you cannot stop thinking about that thing. And then what happens? Not only can you not stop thinking about that thing, you also get into a conversation with that person in your head.

14:02It's not really happening. You get into a conversation in your head with that person, and now you've spiraled off into a whole negative side, and you forgot about all of the good stuff in a relationship. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I said that. She's going to leave me. What am I going to do? Well, I'm going to say this to her. She's going to say this. This is how it's going to happen. And so studies have shown that in a healthy relationship, positive interactions need to significantly outnumber negative ones to maintain a balance of satisfaction because people tend to focus more on negative. Negativity bias also affects your memory when you think about the past as well.

14:33There was a study that was done before negativity bias and the whole research got really big. It was in 1993. It was called Positivity and Negativity Bias in an Autobiographical Memory. And so this study showed how negativity bias influences our autobiographical memory. When you look at the events of your past, you're way more likely to remember the past events that were bad in much more detail. It was found that negative experiences were recalled with more vividness in detail compared to positive experiences. When you can think about like the worst thing that ever happened to you in your life versus the best thing ever happened to you in your life, you will more likely remember vividly the negative experience than you did or than you will of the positive one.

15:16Why is that? That's pretty interesting. Why is that? Well, the reason why is because the study showed that it could be attributed to what they called enhanced cognitive processing devoted to negative events. The fuck does that mean? Well, I'm going to tell you, don't you worry about it. Because negative experiences typically require more extensive problem solving and coping skills than positive ones. So when a positive event happens, yay, it's awesome. It's great and stuff. But why do we remember the negative and why can we vividly remember it because when negative happens, when something happens, when you're at a threat, when your emotions are high, you usually require a whole lot more problem solving and coping skills for the negative ones than the positive ones.

15:55So when you're thinking of your, how crazy, like how crazy is this to think about? When you're thinking about your past, you're more likely to think about and know all of the negative stuff in much more vivid detail than the positive stuff simply because the negative stuff requires much more of your emotion, of your cognitive processing, everything to get through it. Wow, that's pretty crazy, huh? And it really aligns with a broader negativity bias theory that shows that negative events command more of our cognitive resources because of that, they actually remain etched in our memory with much, much more clarity.

16:32So you look at this and you go, shit, am I stuck? How do I ever get past this? What can I do about it. Well, now that you know about it, now you know you can get past it, right? What can you learn from all of this? Your brain is more likely to remember the bad in situations than good. Your brain is more likely to think of the potential negative situations that could possibly come up in your future. So what do we have to do? I can tell you from a recovering pessimist, I used to think of all of the negative. I used to be just a negative little kid. I was a negative teenager. I was negative in my early 20s.

17:07And I was so, I could destroy any possible awesome thing that could come in the future and tell you all of the negative stuff that could possibly happen. Until you realize that you have to be intentional, you must look for the good, whether that's in your past events and remembering the past events and remembering the good events, or looking into the future so that you don't get scared away from your goals. So you don't get scared away from the life that you want. You have to be intentional. Now, And when I say this, a lot of people will say like, oh, well, if you're only focusing on the good, well, then you're not paying attention to the negative.

17:40You're not paying attention to the bad. And that's just being blind. That's not even paying attention to it. That's not healthy to do. No, no, no. I'm not saying don't pay attention to the negative. But what I am saying is when you see something that is quote unquote negative, bad, can you actually look at it from a different lens and think to yourself, okay, this quote unquote bad thing, this negative thing happened to me. How can I make good from it? If something bad happened to you, bad happens to a lot of, it happens to everybody at some point in time. You can't go through this life without some sort of scars.

18:10But when you look at these things and something bad happens to you, it's never something that you want if it's bad, right? Can you go, okay, this isn't what I want. This isn't what I wanted to have happen. This is different than what I was planning in my life, but I'm going to figure out a way to make this good in my life. I'm going to figure out a way to make this be one of the most beneficial things that ever happened. When I first learned this was when I was 15 years old and my father passed away. And I remember it was about, I remember specifically, like I remember I was, I got the idea in my bathroom when I was 15 years old.

18:43And, you know, I can still remember the bathroom because I'm like pausing and thinking about it because it's pretty damn vivid in my mind. We had this old house. It was built in like 1952. And my bathroom still had like the original tile. So it was like pink and teal. So that was my high school bathroom when I was a kid, right? It was pink and teal. I remember I was in there and I was brushing my teeth. And I thought to myself, it was about a week, two weeks after my father passed away. And I was like, this sucks. This is by far the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I was like, I'm 15. If I can live to 95 years old, I've still got 80 years left.

19:21I could either let this thing affect me in a bad way, or I can figure out a way to make this bad thing be the most positive thing that ever happened to me. I can figure out a way to make the bad turn into something good. And I can try to live the rest of my life that way. I remember I went up to my mom, and I was a super shy kid at this point, just so you know. And I went up to her and I said, hey, mom, because my father died as an alcoholic, I said, hey, mom, I'd really like to see if I can go and speak at AA meetings so that people can see what it looks like from the child's perspective of who they're affecting.

19:54And my mom loved the idea. And I was really nervous about it because I wasn't really like a public speaker or anything. And I thought to myself, I would love to go speak at AA meetings so that these people can see how they're affecting their children. They can see from someone whose father did pass away how it affected me and what I had to go through. And maybe they would have another perspective and they would start to change their future. We ended up finding out that you can't go to an AA meeting, which if you guys don't know, if you're outside of America, it's Alcoholics Anonymous. I couldn't go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting because I wasn't an alcoholic.

20:23They don't let non-alcoholics in. That's great. So I couldn't speak to them. But then there was still a part of me that was like, I just want to do good with this. And I told myself that was the worst day of my life. But I will also make that the best day of my life. My father's passing was the worst day of my life, but I will make it the best day of my life through all of the action I'm going to take for the rest of my life. And I know that I would not do what I do now at all, not even close, had I not gone through that event. And so you can look at the event. I can look at the event and I can say, woe is me, my father, these things happen, all of this stuff.

20:54or I could say that happened, it was bad, but I'm going to make sure that it's good. We all have that opportunity in every aspect of our life. Anytime something ever happens to us, we can take something that is bad and we can decide to make it good. We can look into our future and instead of looking at the negative and when we start noticing the fear come up, we go, oh, what am I doing? I'm noticing all the bad, the potential bad that could possibly come up. I'm gonna reframe my thoughts. I'm gonna be intentional and I'm gonna start looking at the opportunities of what my life could possibly be.

21:23at that point in time is when you're starting to actually take control of your programming that's built into your system and starting to look at something that you know could be benefit in the future. So if you can understand the negativity bias is built into your system, you can understand how to actually use it for your benefit in your life. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, if you're like, shit, that was pretty damn good. I learned something. Do me a favor. Do the world a favor. Do your friends a favor. Share this on your Instagram stories and tag me at Rob Dial Jr.

21:51R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. Share with the world. We grow because you guys have the grassroots guerrilla marketing that we have here is what makes us grow. So if you would share it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.