Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion

We hypothesize that there is a general bias, based on both innate predispos itions and experience, in animals and humans, to give greater weight to neg ative entities (e.g., events, objects, personal traits). This is manifested in 4 ways: (a) negative potency (negative entities are stronger than the e quivalent positive entities), (b) steeper negative gradients (the negativit y of negative events grows more rapidly with approach to them in space or t ime than does the positivity of positive events, (c) negativity dominance ( combinations of negative and positive entities yield evaluations that are m ore negative than the algebraic sum of individual subjective valences would predict), and (d) negative differentiation (negative entities are more var ied, yield more complex conceptual representations, and engage a wider resp onse repertoire). We review evidence for this taxonomy, with emphasis on ne gativity dominance, including literary, historical, religious, and cultural sources, as well as the psychological literatures on learning, attention, impression formation, contagion, moral judgment, development, and memory. W e then consider a variety of theoretical accounts for negativity bias. We s uggest that I feature of negative events that make them dominant is that ne gative entities are more contagious than positive entities.