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Why All the News Is Bad: Our Negativity Bias

September 16, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

negativity-bias

Our brain’s own hardwiring for survival makes us vulnerable to stress and anxiety. It evolved to quickly detect threats in the environment and sound the alarm: time to fight or flee now! When we were facing multiple life-or-death threats a million years ago, it was definitely better to err on the safe side. If we reacted to something that didn’t turn out to be a real threat, no significant harm was done. But if we failed to react to something that did turn out to be a serious threat, it could mean the end of us.

The unconscious part of our brain was all about survival a million years ago, and it’s still all about survival today. Although the world we live in has changed radically, our brain has a ways to go to catch up. Operating at a much faster speed that we can consciously keep up with, making connections and seeing patterns that might or might not be there, the unconscious brain signals red alert at the slightest indication of trouble, setting into motion a cascade of physiological effects.

Sometimes this works for us, keeping us safe from actual harm; however, there are far more false alarms than real ones. And we pay a heavy price when this threat-detection system runs unchecked. It’s at the root of what is called the negativity bias. It’s why we notice, react to, and remember negative events to a much greater degree than we do positive ones.

The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones. –Rick Hanson, Ph.D.

System 1: Danger, Danger, Will Robinson

Our unconscious shrugs off neutral or positive news or experiences, sometimes barely registering them, and hones in on the negative stuff. We have a stronger emotional reaction to negative stimuli, which increases the likelihood we’ll remember it. It takes less time for negative experiences to get stored in memory than for the positive experiences, which means our unconscious has more negative memories to draw on than positive ones when it’s evaluating information. And negative experiences affect us longer.

As a result, we are extremely sensitive to perceived or apparent threats. These days, those threats are less likely to be to our immediate survival. But that doesn’t make any difference to our brain. We react just the same whether the threat is to our ideas and beliefs, to our physical or emotional well-being, to our self-esteem, or to a freedom we hold dear.

We all have the same hardwiring. We are all primed to pay attention to the negative. At this point in time, the danger we’re facing is less a result of threats from the environment and more directly a result of our negativity bias. Whether in our intimate relationships, our international relations, or our personal health and well-being, the actual and potential costs of operating from the negativity bias are enormous.

So what can we do?

System 2: Belay that Order

One thing we can’t do is eliminate the negativity bias. It’s up to evolution to modify our perception of and reaction to threats. Hopefully that will happen before it becomes a moot point.

What we can do is develop an awareness of our predisposition to pay attention to and accentuate the negative. We can use System 2—our conscious attention—to:

  1. Notice the negativity bias in ourselves. It’s not easy to be aware of a cognitive bias in the moment, so often the noticing occurs after the fact. But that’s OK. If we continue paying attention, we’ll get faster at spotting the negativity bias in action. We’ll be less at the effect of it.
  2. Notice the negativity bias in others. The point isn’t to call other people out on it. We’re all operating on autopilot most of the time, and when we’re on autopilot we don’t think things through. If we’re aware that someone else is operating from the negativity bias, we don’t have to get caught up in the fear. We don’t have to react.
  3. Ask: Is there a real threat here or only a perceived threat? Once we become familiar with how the negativity bias works, we can develop the habit of evaluating our reactions and calming ourselves.
  4. Intend to pay attention to positive events and experiences. Yes, our attention naturally goes to the negative, but we can train ourselves to focus on positive things. We can intentionally include more pleasure, joy, and laughter in our lives.

Just because we have a negativity bias doesn’t mean we have to give into and continue feeding it. Let’s keep reminding ourselves that more often than not the threat really is all in our head.

Filed Under: Attention, Brain, Cognitive Biases, Consciousness, Habit, Memory, Unconscious Tagged With: Brain, Cognitive bias, Fear, Memory, Mind, Negativity Bias, Survival

Move It!

March 13, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 5 Comments

A public demonstration of aerobic exercises
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Take a hike. Climb some flights of stairs. Lace up your sneakers and head out for a walk, run, or bike ride. Learn how to dance. Pump some iron. Complete a circuit workout at the gym.

Everyone knows that physical exercise is good for the body, and now we know it’s just as good for the brain. A number of studies over the past 10 years have demonstrated how important exercise—especially the aerobic kind—is in regard to both cognitive function and memory.

Brain shrinkage, especially shrinkage of the hippocampus, is associated with memory loss, decreased cognitive functioning, Alzheimer Disease, and dementia. As one witty reporter on the subject said, “at least as it relates to the hippocampus, size does matter.”

But brain shrinkage is not an inevitable function of aging. Regular aerobic exercise has been shown to increase the size of the hippocampus by generating new nerve cells (a process called neurogenesis). The more exercise you engage in as a young or midlife adult, the less brain shrinkage you will have to make up for when you are older. But aerobic exercise can trigger neurogenesis at any age or stage of life.

Aerobic exercise gets your heart to pump more oxygen to your brain and initiates your body’s release of hormones that contribute to the growth of brain cells. Not only can you grow new brain cells as a result of exercise, you can also create new connections between them, thereby increasing your brain’s plasticity.

Working memory, planning and scheduling (managing time and attention), multitasking, switching focus, and dealing with ambiguity are some of the functions of an area of the brain known as the executive center. For many people, executive center functions are adversely affected with age. The great news is that these are the very functions that benefit most from regular physical exercise.

Exercise provides short-term benefits, too—as in right now. Twenty minutes of aerobic exercise can immediately improve your cognitive functioning. To enhance the effects, do something that also requires coordination or strategy, such as dancing, playing a game, or ice skating.

It isn’t only aerobic exercise that provides these cognitive benefits. A recent study indicates that yoga may be even better at sharpening the mind. The sample for this study was small, but the results are intriguing. If they can be replicated in other studies, this would be great news for people who can’t–or don’t want to–engage in vigorous physical exercise.

Recent research published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology shows how inactivity also alters the brain, but not in a good way. This is your brain. This is your brain on the couch.

Physical exercise is “neuroprotective” for your brain no matter how old you are–and maybe even no matter what kind of exercise you do. It’s never too late—or too soon—to move it for your brain’s sake.

Filed Under: Brain, Living, Memory, Mind Tagged With: Aerobic exercise, Alzheimer Disease, Brain, Brain Health, Cognition, Exercise, Neurogenesis

Breaking those Synaptic Connections

April 18, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

English: Drawing illustrating the process of s...

Some new research indicates that as we age we don’t have a harder time learning new things because we can’t absorb the information but because we can’t forget “the old stuff.” There are two proteins in the brain that play a role in synaptic connections: NR2A and NR2B. NR2B weakens synaptic connections, essentially creating “space” for new ones to be formed. NR2A inhibits the process. Before puberty, our brains produce more NR2B than NR2A; adult brains produce more NR2A and less NR2B. When it comes to learning, it’s just as important for our brains to be able to weaken synaptic connections as it is for them to be able to strengthen new ones. A year or two ago, I remember reading about a study suggesting that one of the purposes of sleep was to “prune” some of the brain’s synaptic connections. Recently, SF Gate ran an article linking brain deterioration and sleep woes, although with a different slant:

After comparing the brains and memory skills of young study participants and older subjects, researchers found that age-related brain deterioration contributes to poor sleep and, in turn, recollection problems.

The article goes on to say that poor sleep then contributes to brain deterioration, creating a downward spiral. It doesn’t say anything about NR2A and NR2B but attributes the brain deterioration that results from poor sleep to a reduction in the amount of long-wave sleep. Whatever the mechanism, sleep seems to be pretty important to our ability to learn, especially as we get older.

Processing Regret

Mental (psychological) health and brain health are not identical, but they  go hand-in-hand in many cases, to some extent because of the brain’s plasticity. Forgive and forget is an old adage that may now be scientifically validated. One of the things we may have difficulty forgetting are thoughts and feelings of regret over events from the past, either losses or missed opportunities—which represent a different kind of loss. How our brains “process regret” (read article) is a factor in our mental health. When our brains actively mitigate our experience of loss, we are much less likely to experience ongoing regret over them. Learning to let go turns out to be good advice. Another way to visualize it is breaking the synaptic connections of regret.Enhanced by Zemanta

Filed Under: Consciousness, Memory, Mind Tagged With: Aging, Brain, Forgetting, Learning, Memory, Regret, Sleep, Synapse

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