Negative bias or What’s good?

My work often involves thinking and talking about problems that need to be solved. As a result, the problems come up more that their absence. This creates a bias – all the good things I know tend to be less prominent; their picture in my mind less detailed. For example, a faculty member told me that she had some great students this semester, and she observed some great lessons. But of course, the reason she was in my office was to discuss one troublesome student, which we did at length. Now I know a whole lot about the one problematic student – her history, her attitude, her errors, - but almost nothing about the good students, other than they are good. After all, we don’t need to do something about them. And I don’t think it is just my situation. Most of my colleagues also tend to worry about the things that do not work; while the positive things rarely need discussion or great analysis. Excellent papers or lesson plans are just less memorable than the bad ones, because the latter contain possible clues for how to improve.

The media’s negative bias has been known for a long time: it is hard to sell good news. It is especially difficult to sell good news if they are not really news. For example, imagine a headline “America remains a democracy with functioning legal system,” or “Rhode Island’s public schools continue to accept all children.” Does not work, right? The tendency to take good things for granted is an evolutionary trait. If it is warm and there is a fresh water lake nearby, you would be wasting your time and energy constantly reflecting on how easy it is to keep warm and on the lack of thirst. All cultures have celebrations to balance the negative bias by setting aside some time to reflect on positives. All religions also make a point of thanking their gods for the blessings. But the very fact that these mechanisms exist tell us about the initial imbalance.

The problem is that we are all working a little too much, and trying to solve too many problems. The negative bias contributes to too much stress, because less and less space remains for reflecting on all good things. The traditional cultural resources for restoring the sense of balance are not sufficient anymore. This is why we should all practice a form of cognitive restructuring, or reframing. I hereby declare a new rule. Every time one of you comes in to my office, you must tell me what is the best thing that happened to you lately; describe in some detail. I will do the same when I come to you. Instead of greeting each other “How are you?,” Let’s use “What’s good?” If we start with those conversations, perhaps the problems may appear in their proper proportions, and we won’t stress over the small stuff. You can tell I am getting into the holiday spirit. It’s all the music in the mall.