Animals have heightened perception when it comes to feeling effects such as pain, danger, or failure. The avoidance of these threats, increases the chances of suvival and thus that the animal passes on its genes. 

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Humans have a tendency to focus on the negative. For example, we focus more on potential threats than benefits.

Negativity bias

The sustaining of life. From an evolutionary perspective, living beings adapt to survive to live long enough to reproduce and pass on their genes. Animals develop advantageous behaviors to achieve this goal.

Survival (Evolutionary Psychology)

- Bad is felt more than good
- Social pain
- Direct pathway model
- Pain relief

Focuses of pain

Aronson, Elliot, and Joshua Aronson. The Social Animal. Worth Publishers, Macmillan Learning, 2018.

The Social Animal

People tend to share bad news with others more than good news.

Negativity bias and news

People have stronger emotional responses to negative feedback than to positive feedback.

Negativity bias and feedback

Bad is felt more than good

Risk aversion

If given the option, people tend to try to avoid losses more than achieve gains. This is a factor that contributes to how humans are not perfectly rational economic agents.

Loss aversion

Humans are more likely to think that a negatively phrased statement is true than a positively phrased one when the content is the same. 

Negativity Bias and Truth Judgements

How pain was explained in the 1950s and early 1960s. Pain occurs when receptors (specifically nociceptors), are stimulated and send signals from the skin directly to the brain.

Direct pathway model

After some sort of injury, a certain amount of pain is pathological pain and can be eased by:
- knowing how to direct their attention (i.e. trying to relax and knowing what to expect)
- a placebo

Pain relief (pathological)

Hurting associated with humiliation, rejection, or insult. It can feel as bad or worse than physical pain.

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