Our innate bias to focus on the negative and how to compensate for its effects.

Have you ever obsessed about the one critical comment someone made to you despite the fact that they also made quite a few positive remarks?  For some reason you keep ruminating about that one negative remark.  You think about it over and over, perhaps looking for a way to argue better against it or at least to forget about it, but the painful memory just keeps playing back in your mind like a broken record.  Is there a scientific explanation for this tendency to focus, sometimes obsessively, on the negative aspects of our lives?  Are we really powerless to control our bias to pay more attention to the negative than to the positive in our lives?

Story of two wolves

There is a wise old North American Indian story about two wolves that I think helps us understand this bias to focus on the angry, painful, or fearful things in life.  Although I told another version of the two wolf story in my previous post, I think it deserves retelling because it illustrates vividly how this bias can influence our thoughts, emotions, and actions in very negative and maladaptive ways.  Here is the alternative version as provided by the website: http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TwoWolves-Cherokee.html).

 

An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, "Let me tell you a story.

I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do.

But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times."