Stepping Out of the Shadows
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Imagine you're an architect, but instead of drawing up a plan for a skyscraper or a bridge, you've been asked to design the most sophisticated edifice in the universe, the human brain.
What is the negativity bias and how does it affect our perception?
Getting to work at your drafting table, you'd likely prioritize accuracy. You want this brain to perceive the world exactly as it is, a perfect mirror of reality. In your blueprint, the good and the bad, the rewarding and the threatening, all would be treated the same. Every event, every experience would be assigned equal weight, given the same attention and remembered equally. But as any architect will tell you, there is a vast gulf between a design that works on paper and one that actually survives the elements. The same is true of our own minds. The architect of evolution wasn't interested in making us objective observers or serene philosophers. It wasn't trying to design a brain that took a fair and balanced view of the world.
It was building a survival machine. To survive in a world filled with menacing predators, scarce resources, and social traps, the brain had to be designed with a series of built-in biases. Those are the same brains we have inside our heads today. It's why we focus more intently on some flavors of experience rather than others. In turn, these biases shape what we perceive, how we respond, and even the course of our most intimate relationships. This week on Hidden Brain, and in a companion story on Hidden Brain Plus, the lopsided ledgers in our minds, and how we can bring them into balance.
Hidden Brain
Why do negative experiences overshadow positive ones?
Let's say you're a music critic attending a symphony. For two hours, 80 musicians play in perfect, breathtaking harmony. The strings are soaring, the brass is precise, and the conducting is fluid. But in the final minute of the performance, a single violinist hits a flat note. It lasts for less than a second, a tiny discordance in an otherwise flawless evening. When you sit down to write your review, what do you remember? If your brain were a perfect recording device, that one second error would be a mere blip buried under two hours of beauty. But for a critic, and that means all of us, that one flat note can become the entire story. It lingers in our minds and shapes how we remember the evening. At the University of California, Davis, psychologist Allison Ledgerwood studies how and why this happens.
Allison Ledgerwood, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Thank you so much for having me.
Alison, a few years ago, you noticed something peculiar about the way you responded to developments in your work life. What did you notice?
I noticed that I could have a big success or a small success one day. An academic paper gets accepted or I meet a new work colleague who I'm really excited to become friends with. And that would be lovely. But then the next day or later that day, something negative would happen. A paper would get rejected. Somebody would snap at me in the hallway or not look happy to see me. And I couldn't get that negative out of my head. And this would happen even if the good thing was way more important than the bad thing when I took a step back. The negative seemed to stick with me all day, all week.
You observed a similar dynamic when reading over your student evaluations. Some forms of feedback stick in your head?
So I teach these big classes, 200 students, 300 students. And at the end of each quarter, you get teaching evaluations that are passed out by the university and ask some questions about the class and the professor so that you can get feedback on what's going well and what you could do better. And often I would get a lot of glowing comments, right? I'm flipping through them and it's like, this is the best class I've taken so far at UC Davis. And this was one of the best professors I've ever had. And everything seems rosy. And then I would come across a single negative comment, right? Somebody says, I could have found all of this online. And I'm devastated. I'm counter-arguing in my head. I'm thinking about the hours and hours and hours of work I put into pulling together these sources from different places so that the students wouldn't have to just have everything canned from a textbook.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:18
2
What is the negativity bias and how does it affect our perception?
0:18–2:20
3
Why do negative experiences overshadow positive ones?
2:20–6:28
4
How does our evolutionary past influence our focus on negativity?
6:28–10:08
5
What role does framing play in shaping our perceptions?
10:08–16:50
6
How can we learn to balance negative and positive experiences?
16:50–43:58
7
What strategies can help us manage feelings of disgust?
43:58–48:18
8
How does disgust manifest in social contexts and relationships?
48:18–1:28:33