Humans are wired for negativity

Negativity was interpreted negatively in this article. It shouldn't be. Negativity can be positive.

Cultivating dissatisfaction is key to doing good work. If you can't bring yourself to say "Man, this sucks, I could do better than that" how will you try to do better?

In fact, research shows people who are motivated more by the fear of loss rather than the hope of gain, in other words, defensive pessimists, are better prepared to handle the obstacles that get thrown in their path. Being negative is the strongest motivation for these people.

The irony of it is humans being wired for negativity sounds like bad news for the optimists. But there's a way to model optimists in terms of negativity too. Optimists have what Keats referred to as high negative capability: they are capable of "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason".

As a practical matter, I think it helps to honor both the negative and the positive. Be negative when you are figuring out what you want to fix that's broken, and be positive about bringing yourself to actually do it.

Some humans... Others, not so much.

A related study from last year: "Fear as a Disposition and an Emotional State: A Genetic and Environmental Approach to Out-Group Political Preferences" http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12016/full

"Fear is a pervasive aspect of political life and is often explored as a transient emotional state manipulated by events or exploited by elites for political purposes. The psychological and psychiatric literatures, however, have also established fear as a genetically informed trait, and people differ in their underlying fear dispositions. Here we propose these differences hold important implications for political preferences, particularly toward out-groups. Using a large sample of related individuals, we find that individuals with a higher degree of social fear have more negative out-group opinions, which, in this study, manifest as anti-immigration and prosegregation attitudes. We decompose the covariation between social fear and attitudes and find the principal pathway by which the two are related is through a shared genetic foundation. Our findings present a novel mechanism explicating how fear manifests as out-group attitudes and accounts for some portion of the genetic influences on political attitudes."

Perhaps it's more a physical thing than a metaphysical or psychological thing. We live in a universe of increasing entropy and by definition, for any expected outcome the possible disorderly states vastly outnumber the orderly ones. So when we contemplate a set of outcomes for a single future event, it is likely that we always end up contemplating more negative ones than positive ones?

Or, rephrasing it a little "we put much more energy and resources into what is not working well and can be improved or could be dangerous then into what is already good", which sounds a lot less surprising.

Interesting article that buried the lede.

The part about the criticism of the positivity ratio was particularly interesting because a co-author wrote the brilliant parody of post-modernism published in one of its seminal journals, Social Text (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair).

A critique by Sokal is prima facie intriguing.

I need to go read the original article but the Wikipedia summary is fascinating (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_positivity_ratio) in specific, Fredrickson and Losada appear to have chosen functional parameters that yield good results, not ones based on evidence.

Yes, people do it here a lot. The Wall Street Journal comments section, for example, is unbearable because it's simply full of negative comments. I don't mind people being critical because sometimes negative people are actually well informed. Unfortunately, there's too much fire and forget without any accountability. Anyway, we just need to figure a way to raise the bar in such a way that real information is passed on rather than unadulterated opinion.

"Aside from Dutch, all other languages lean toward the bleak."

This is rather interesting. I wonder if this contributes to their low rate of aggressive dreams and positivity. Furthermore, it would be interesting to study if this might somehow be connected with their very "liberal" policies towards sex and drugs, sources of pleasure.

We are good at processing negative information. That doesn't mean we are a race of 'depressive realists' or that significant positive emotional events are not the defining building blocks of our character.

This is what causes the ‘fight or flight’ reflex – a survival instinct based on our ability to use memory to quickly assess threats.

This along with all the other articles about how it's OK to be sad, depressed, burnt out, unable to focus, disinterested and demotivated are complete bullshit. We're living in a society where we no longer have any real battles to fight and our culture is starting to conjure imaginary problems out of thin air and then come up with creative ways to solve them.

"...even a random snide comment take up most of our psychic space, leaving little room for compliments or pleasant experiences to help us along life’s challenging path."

Here, have a strong cup of toughen-the-fuck-up.

PS: The fact that you're finding this at the bottom of the page and greyed out is a case in point on how HN has fallen in love with self pity. (Not an edit)

First, it makes sense. A teaspoon of wine in a barrel of sewage makes a barrel of sewage. A teaspoon of sewage in a barrel of wine makes a barrel of sewage. This isn't just a snide saying. It applies directly to, say, the safety of drinking water. That obsessive search for what might be wrong has held an evolutionary benefit for millions of years.

There's also a social power in it. We claim that we want to lead via inspiration and charisma, and that carrot-driven approach works at the big-picture level, but most people who succeed in business, day to day, get their way by exaggerating the negative consequences of whatever they don't want. "I want X" is to put yourself out there and risk being called a bike-shedder. "The company is fucked if not-X" makes it sound like you're looking out for the group... unless you do it too often. So much of the tension and negativity in corporate life comes from the accumulations of these phony existential risks (and the bad decisions resulting from people, especially at the top, buying into them).

(This is not to say that one should directly apply the stick, i.e. be a bully. You don't want that. You want to convince people that there is objective harm to the group, out of your control, that will befall it, if not-X is chosen. If you're the one holding the stick, then you'll be seen as an extortionist dickhead, but invocation of external sticks is quite powerful; see: religion.)

Then there's the art of the complain-brag. The best way to diffuse envy of an elevated position is to make it seem like it actually entails a lot of suffering. "I envy you guys on the floor; I just sit in meetings all day." From CEOs to middle managers, people pretend their jobs are unenviable, because it makes the organization more stable that way. But the picture that people end up with is that things are unpleasant from any direction and unlikely to get better. Plenty of people do like their jobs, but they're not allowed to say as much to the plebs. People will tolerate much more inequality if the people above them in the ranks appear not to be enjoying the position.

bullshit

"Wired" is essentially referring to genetics. ~ 8% of our genomic lineage is that of a virus. Negativity is just the manifestation of an innate human pathogenic desire to cause harm. It's just nature working its magic.