Baumeister and Tierney on the Negativity Bias in Psychology
For many decades, negative emotions were at the center of scientific psychological research. Baumeister and Tierney believe that it is time to rethink this:
“For almost the entire 20th century, psychologists have come up with reasons to be unhappy and to assume that little will change. The psychology textbooks devoted twice as much space to unpleasant emotions as to pleasant ones, a negativity bias that was also found in the professional journals. Psychology emphasized the negative effects of experiences: lifelong neuroses due to childhood memories, the lasting effect of post-traumatic stress, the inhibiting consequences of aging, the fear of death that supposedly haunts us all.”
– Roy F. Baumeister / John Tierney in their book “The Power of Bad – No longer seeing black and living well”, page 229.