A related note, taking the point about negativity's correlation with being perceived as more intelligent: I've long wondered whether Hegel's notion that thought itself is fundamentally negative is true; it seems to make some intuitive sense and also gels with findings like those article opens with. If this is true to some extent, it's perhaps not that positive thoughts are less intelligent, but that meaningful positive thoughts are more difficult to obtain—as one necessarily has to pass through the negative first (thinking) to reach them. Outright positivity is not thought but simple satisfaction. If something doesn't disappoint us we really don't have any reason to think about it aside from the way in which we think about wants and urges, which isn't really thinking so much as it is desire. Really, only those poetic spirits seem to have mastered thinking purely positively—that is thinking desire.

In other words, it is not negative thought that's praiseworthy, but critical thought—thought that questions—which must begin negatively. Often this questioning begins (and unfortunately ends, for most) by questioning a thing on its aspects that disappoint or dissatisfy, that's after all what urges the questioning. To emerge from that position and to be able to, in turn, acknowledge the positive qualities of the thing is to dwell in that serene and moderate realm called reason, not too negative, not too positive—reasonable.