It takes four good things to overcome one bad thing

So says a provocative study of the power of negative thinking, Jan 11th 2020

A poor first impression, it is widely acknowledged, counts for more than a good one.
Memories that resurface suddenly tend to be unpleasant. Professional fearmongers draw a larger,
more receptive audience than purveyors of restrained analysis. It is normal for people to dwell
on a word of criticism for much longer than they luxuriate in a shower of praise.
For Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist, and John Tierney, a journalist, these are
symptoms of “the power of bad”. Their provocative book explores what they characterise as “the
universal tendency for negative events and emotions to affect us more strongly than
positive ones”. Their examples make for uncomfortable reading. “One moment of parental
neglect can lead to decades of angst and therapy,” they write chasteningly, “but no one spends
adulthood fixated on that wonderful day at the zoo.” Other claims are dispiriting: “Successful
marriages are defined not by improvement but by avoiding decline.”
Yet the authors are shrewd about the ways in which negativity can pollute both intimate
relationships and large groups. They also show that bad experiences can be instructive, using
stories to humanise a subject that could otherwise be dry. One concerns Felix Baumgartner, a
skydiver who spent years masking his anxieties, which multiplied as he stubbornly projected an
air of confidence. They only burst forth when he was in final rehearsals for an attempt to leap
from a balloon 24 miles (39km) above Earth.
As they examine how Mr Baumgartner and others reverse morbid patterns of thought, the
authors set out a rule of thumb: “It takes four good things to overcome one bad thing.”
Accordingly, they are less keen on accentuating life’s positives than on trying to muffle its
negatives. In part that means reframing adversity, like wounded soldiers who view injury
“not as something that shattered their plans but as something that started them on a new
path”. On a more parochial note, they advise that people who have to deal with rude customers
finish every encounter, no matter how bruising, with a positive gesture—and that if you are
likely to be on the receiving end of reviews, you should get a friend to summarise them, to avoid
direct exposure to indelibly hurtful phrases.
A few of the authors’ tips are bland: keep to a minimum your dealings with any colleague
who is clearly a bad apple, “make time for nostalgia” and in dark moments try repeating the
analgesic phrase, “This too shall pass.” More often, though, their tone is challenging. They
believe that higher education, after decades of enfeeblement by exaggerated anxieties about
student well-being, should embrace a policy of “less carrot and more stick”. Public debate, they
argue, tends to be shaped by people whose livelihood depends on amplifying the chances of
catastrophe. Thus the commentariat offers rivetingly grim pieces about the risks of opioid
pain-relievers, but fails to acknowledge their benefits.
At times, such judgments on supposedly overblown negativity may strike readers as a
touch blasé (the authors reckon a patient’s risk of addiction to opioids is “probably less than one
or two percent”). The pair are at their most bracing when, instead of lambasting the doomsayers,
they extol “the upside of bad” and the power of negative experiences “to sharpen the mind and
energise the will”. It has to be said, though, that some of those upsides come with titanic
quantities of downside. At one point, they approvingly cite Samuel Johnson’s macabre
observation that “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind
wonderfully.” (The Power of Bad. By John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister. Penguin Press; 336
pages; $28. Allen Lane; £20.)