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It’s human nature to think about how we do not measure up, the reasons why we are behind in life, how we could be better parents, why our partners are annoyed with us, or why we are annoyed with ourselves. We wind up rolling around in our thoughts, finding ourselves in limitless unease.
When we’re on this negative track, we’re not open to growth and progress. We are stuck in a distressed frame of mind that is often absolute, which is a very terrible cognitive distortion that the mind likes to pull. The person who suffers from this kind of polarized thinking uses words like never, forever, always, and nothing. I’ll never amount to anything. I will be a loser forever. I will always be alone.
Here’s a simple example. I spent an hour reading on a city park bench surrounded by sunshine, flowers, and a pleasant ambiance, but what will I remember most? A rat ran on the brick edge of the garden path. I know rats are everywhere in New York City, but I remember that rat.
Many researchers have examined what they call the negativity bias, including a well-cited study in the Personality and Social Psychology Review journal. Essentially, the study concluded, we focus on the negative, from distressing thoughts, anxious worries, and unhappy emotions, to traumatic events and disagreeable interactions. We are inclined to look at events, in the past and future, through this filter. This built-in tendency is a byproduct of our evolution as a species. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had to be alert and ready because a predator could be around any corner. It was more important to avoid being eaten than to find food.
For early humans, this was a key feature of the brain, as the brain wants us to survive. Different body parts—like the eyes and the nose—send information to the brain, and impending danger activates the amygdala, which is located in the temporal lobes above the ears. This is where emotions like fear and anger are processed. The amygdala is responsible for the fight-or-flight response, where we either settle in to fight or flee. If I smell gas, I had better look for the source; otherwise, the house might explode.
Evolution nurtures the feeling that something awful is about to happen. The human brain hasn’t changed that much since the dawn of man. We continue to operate by these rules and have a thought bias toward the negative because the brain is trying to be protectively error-prone—that is, the brain makes errors in judgment to protect us. There is good reason for this. In the modern era, we may not know if a stranger is trustworthy; therefore, the brain must make an automatic choice. This is why we might gloss over someone who seems to be good and decent, and zero in on someone who seems harmful. Should I trust or not trust this person? We put ourselves in danger when we misjudge a bad person. Being alert to such negatives keeps us alive; this is evolution at work.
Because we are wired to look for danger, we also tend to look for danger in the wrong places. We are loss- and risk-averse. We remember losing money more than we remember winning or finding money. We remember painful things, and we forget pleasant things.
The work of Robert Sapolsky can help us parse this. He is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and the author of many books, including Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Humans and primates have a more activated stress response than other animals. Even if there’s no danger, humans remember the stress of previous danger and anticipate future similar events to happen again and again. This can cause mood disorders and other illnesses. Meanwhile, animals return to a calm state—the cheetah chases the zebra, then the zebra placidly returns to the savannah to graze. Humans don’t do that.
Roy Baumeister, likely one of the most cited social scientists of our time, has thought deeply about human nature and the pull toward the negatives of life. We peg our minds to the bad things that happen more than the positive or the neutral. He found this propensity in all areas of life, from bad relationships, unhappy workplaces, and terrible sex to poor parenting and horrible memories. Baumeister found that negative emotions are more important to us than positive ones. He summarizes the idea with the catchphrase, Bad is stronger than good. Humans spend much more time avoiding bad moods rather than creating or prolonging good moods, he found.
Adapted from the book How to Be Less Miserable. Blackstone Publishing, 2025.
