2024-04-07 20:58:34
The psychology of ‘negativity bias’, focusing on bad information
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“If they go mean, we will go even meaner.”
If you look at the political world these days, it seems that things are going in reverse from the words of former U.S. President Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama. Ms. Michelle’s original statement was, “When they go low, we go high.” This is a phrase that frequently appears in domestic politics whenever negative competition intensifies.
In recent days, the ruling and opposition parties have poured out an endless stream of harsh words during the election campaign, including ‘dog’, ‘garbage’, ‘nabe’, ‘descendants of massacre’, ‘prostitution’, ‘adultery’, ‘thug’, and ‘stepmother’. Some even make a joke about going to the polls with green onions as part of a negative election campaign. The primary negative competition is fierce, with people saying ‘the opponent is so terrible, please vote for me’. Baseless slander against personal information is also serious.
Amid the banquet of criticism, the really important candidates’ vision, political philosophy, and policy pledges lost their place. Let’s think about what key pledges our local congressman candidates have made for regional development. If you haven’t read the election announcement material carefully, it’s difficult to remember in detail. The same goes for each party’s major pledges.
On the other hand, criticisms hurled at the opposing camp become deeply embedded in the mind even after hearing them just once. The more powerful and unpleasant a word is, the better it is remembered. In this regard, we can find the reason why politicians engage in muddy fights every election season. Let’s take a look at the psychological mechanism behind the negative strategy during election season, which creates the effect of seeing something even if you don’t like it and remembering it even if it’s unpleasant.
● More interested in bad news and bad words
Cognitive psychologists find the cause in negativity bias, a psychological characteristic that focuses more attention on negative information. Negativity bias refers to the psychological tendency to be more aroused and influenced by bad information than good information. If your ears perk up more to news criticizing the other party than to policy pledges, you are affected by negativity bias.
Negativity bias appears frequently in everyday life. We easily let go of compliments that say, “You’re really good at it,” but we always pay attention to criticism that says, “You’re really bad.” Also, when investing in stocks, you suffer a greater psychological blow when they fall than when they rise by the same amount. Even though good and bad things happen alternately, we sometimes feel as if our lives are full of bad things.
![“Trash” VS “Devastating vote”… Why are negative strategies so prevalent during election season?[최고야의 심심(心深)토크]](https://dimg.donga.com/wps/NEWS/IMAGE/2024/04/05/124341894.1.png "“Trash” VS “Devastating vote”… Why are negative strategies so prevalent during election season?[최고야의 심심(心深)토크]")
Therefore, during election season, negative information such as a specific candidate’s abusive language, expedient practices, or criminal history has a powerful effect. Once a candidate gets caught up in gossip, it is difficult to leave a positive impression in the voters’ minds even if he later announces a good pledge. In particular, the blow is greater for political newcomers. This is because the influence of the first impression effect (Primary Effect), in which the first information about a specific target has a greater impact than information encountered later, and the influence of negativity bias are combined.
Even if voters rationally prefer policy elections, they are actually more attracted to news that contains harsh words. A research team from the Department of Political Science at McGill University in Canada had participants freely read political articles under the pretense that they were conducting a study to measure eye movements while reading articles. The actual experiment had nothing to do with eye movements, but rather was to see which articles people read and how much.
As a result, most participants clicked on articles focusing on politics or conflict earlier and more often than on articles promoting pledges. People who are more interested in politics see more news about political conflicts.
● The bad information-gathering instinct that remains within us.
Why is negative information more powerful than positive information?
The answer can be found in human survival instinct. In the past, humans had to pay close attention to negative information that could threaten their survival. Negative information that would be in trouble if you didn’t know was more important than positive information that was good to know. For example, where not to go to avoid wild animals was more important than where to go to find game. You can search for places with a lot of game through trial and error, but once you meet a wild beast, it’s over.
Although we no longer encounter wild animals on the road, negative information still takes priority in our cognitive systems. A research team from the Department of Psychology at the University of California asked participants to choose which news they would hear first: bad news or good news. Then, 8 out of 10 people responded that they would hear the bad news first. It was also discovered that those who heard bad news tended to immediately jump into action to find a solution to make up for the situation.
In another study, five-year-old children were also found to be sensitive to negative information. When the children were shown pictures of faces with various expressions, they found pictures of faces with angry, sad, and fearful expressions first, rather than faces with happy and happy smiles.
Our bodies also react sensitively to negative information. Several studies have shown that when exposed to negative information, heart rate and skin conductance increase and facial muscle contraction occurs, which takes a long time to return to normal levels. On the other hand, when exposed to positive information, this physical reaction rarely occurred, or if it did occur, it quickly returned to the original level.
● Is three good things the same value as one bad thing?
From this perspective, negative campaigning during election season is a cost-effective strategy in many ways. Some scholars claim that negativity is three times more powerful than positivity. According to this, the effect of a candidate appealing his or her political philosophy or vision three times and dissing an opponent’s candidate once is similar.
Randy Larson, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington who has been studying negativity bias, had experimental participants record their daily moods in detail for 1 to 3 months. Analysis of this revealed that people usually experience one bad day for every three good days.
Based on this, the research team concluded that when the ratio of positivity to negativity in life is 3 to 1, one can live a normal life that is neither very tragic nor extremely happy. The research team said, “Negative experiences produce approximately three times greater effects than positive experiences.”
In this extension, Roy Baumeister, author of ‘Negativity Bias’ and professor of psychology at Florida State University, proposes the ‘Rule of Four’. This means that in order to be a little happier than an average life, you need at least four times more positivity than negativity. If we apply this to an election campaign, you need to promote your positive image four times to overcome one negative attack from your opponent.
Because of these characteristics, companies put tremendous effort into covering up fraud issues. This is because consumer reactions to products that they pay for are very cruel. For example, it can be predicted that for Tsingtao beer, whose consumption plummeted last year after a worker was caught urinating on beer ingredients at a Chinese factory, a huge volume offensive of positive issues is needed to rebound.
● No one likes bad news
The unfortunate thing is that the official campaign period is only 14 days. A negative offensive seems to be more effective in order to imprint itself in the public’s mind in a short period of time.
But there is hope. Although humans may be more attracted to negative information for the purpose of avoiding threats, they do not like it more than positive information. Negative attacks such as slander and swear words directed at the opponent will, in the long run, tire out voters and make them leave.
A research team at the Georgia Institute of Technology analyzed over 520,000 posts on social media Users who posted a lot of negative content attracted attention in the beginning, but there was a limit to the increase in the number of followers after 15 months.
On the other hand, the number of followers of users who continued to post positive posts increased significantly. In the long run, people are more attracted to those who convey positive messages. Although negativity has a powerful influence on us, we ultimately prefer positivity.
● Voters: “I don’t vote for candidates who make personal attacks.”
There is one more fact that candidates should know. According to research by Shim Seong-wook, a professor of advertising and public relations at Hanyang University, voters basically do not evaluate candidates who use negative strategies favorably. He especially negatively evaluated candidates who attacked the opposing candidate’s military issues, family, religion, or health, and responded that he would not vote for that candidate. In fact, this is a point that the political world must remember, as most of the negative attacks that have been released so far amount to personal attacks.
However, it was different when there were policy-related issues, such as the other party’s financing measures, among the negative publicity content. Voters tended to reasonably accept criticism of the opposing candidate’s political views and claims, rather than his or her identity. Negative strategies can have a positive effect when criticism is directed not at the individual candidate, but at his or her political claims.
The intention to vote for a candidate who attacked his opponent in this way was relatively higher than for a candidate who made personal attacks. Professor Shim said, “When negative attacks are limited to the political views of the opposing candidate, it can be seen as a relatively more reasonable criticism. If personal attacks are the main focus, like this general election, voters will become skeptical about politics in the long run, leading to a drop in voter turnout.” “It could backfire,” he said.
As the election day approaches, the urgent political world may be able to temporarily captivate our eyes and ears with harsh words and crude criticism. However, let us remember that in the end, we also have the ability to evaluate and judge it rationally. We’re just instinctively focused on bad stories, and we don’t like them any better.
Reporter Choi Go-ya [email protected]
2024-04-07 20:58:34