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Negativity Bias
“Nine kind comments and one criticism. Which one moves in first on the way home?”
01 / SUMMARY
In short
Across several domains, negative information captures more attention or carries more weight than comparable positive information. It is not one universal law, and its size changes with task, expectation, and relevance.
03 / SCENE
In the wild
A performance review with four strengths and one specific concern may be remembered the next day as “it went badly.”
04 / LIMIT
The limit
It does not prove the mind is fundamentally pessimistic or that one bad event always requires a fixed number of good ones.
FINAL NOTE
What remains
Separate count from intensity: record all signals before letting the most unpleasant one summarize the set.