STREET DOGS:
MICHEL PIREU: Negative waves
Why we find it easier to be negative
From Michael Shermer at Edge.org: One of the most understated effects in all cognitive science is the psychology behind why negative events, emotions and thoughts trump by a wide margin those that are positive. This bias was discovered and documented by the psychologists Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman in 2001, showing that across almost all domains of life, we seem almost preternaturally pessimistic. Negative stimuli command more attention than positive stimuli. Pain feels worse than no pain feels good — as the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer put it, "we feel pain, but not painlessness". Picking out an angry face in a crowd is easier and faster to do than picking out a happy face. Negative events lead us to seek causes more readily than do positive events. There are more cognitive categories for and descriptive terms of negative emotions than positive. Empathy is more readily triggered by negative stimuli than positive. Evil contaminates good more than good purifies evil. In religiou...
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