Can’t stop focusing on the negative? This is why

podcast on 10 January, host Ian Sample asked the social psychologist what areas of our life the negativity bias influences, and his answer was incredibly honest.

“It might be easier to come up with a short list of things that aren’t affected,” Baumeister admitted. “If you have a good day you feel good, and if you have a bad day you feel bad, but the bad day tends to carry over into the next day, while the good day doesn’t. So good things wear off much more rapidly.

And as it turns out, our tendency to focus on the bad things and overlook all the positive bits of lifeIt makes a lot of sense when you think about it – when we were running away from predators and fighting to survive on a day to day basis, it was in our best interests to focus on the threats around us.

“If there’s a dangerous predator and you don’t recognise it because you don’t see it and don’t classify it, well, that’s the end,” Baumeister explains. “Whereas if there’s an opportunity for great food or some other wonderful experience and you miss it, it’s too bad, but it’s not going to have any huge lasting effect on you.

So next time you go to complain about the one bad moment in your day, turn around that focus and pick something positive.email for a curated edit of brilliant content every day

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