Negativity Bias – Three Thoughts for Thursday – July 2025

~ Negativity Bias ~

This spring, I taught an undergraduate course on organizational behavior, in person, twice a week, for two hours. We covered topics like self-awareness which included our values, strengths and weaknesses, personality, etc., how we show up in an organization and the ripple effects we have, as well as how we can use our self-awareness to self-manage and have more intention around how we impact others. We also learned about how we function in teams, and how teams fit with organizations, along with some of the downfalls of individuals, teams, and organizations, and how to prevent some of these pitfalls. We talked a lot about how to show up as our best selves, how to leverage flow, how to build resilience and confidence. The students presented on topics like generational differences in the workplace, mental health, perfectionism, talent development, and the pros and cons of a competitive culture. I was impressed by the engagement of these 28 students. 

The last time I taught the course, I was in 2023, still in a post-Covid haze, I thought, given the lack of attendance and lack of engagement. I said after this course in 2023, that I didn’t feel the need or desire to teach another undergraduate course, I’d stick to the grad students. This spring’s course left me feeling optimistic, hopeful, and excited for the students graduating and heading off to the workplace. While the University always sends out formal course evaluations, the rate of submission is low (9 of the 28 students completed the official eval). With this in mind, I have always included as a part of the final, three questions: 

1. What did you like about the course that you would suggest I keep? 

2. What would you suggest I add, get rid of or change? 

3. What are you taking away as your most valuable learning?

I find this is where I get the feedback I’m looking for, the feedback that lets me know what I did well and what I could improve upon. Instead of rants and complaints, I get genuine, critical, and actionable feedback, and I get great ideas for making the course better. This was again true this year, however there was one of the 9 official course evaluations that caught me off guard. It was scathing! After beginning to read it, and yes, I read them all, I had to do a double take to make sure the student was actually reflecting on and referring to my course. 

I found myself in a spiral of doubt, totally deflated and derailed, ruminating on this one particular evaluation – I wouldn’t even call it feedback, but rather an attack – allowing it to discolor all the other positive comments and actionable feedback. It gnawed at me, caused me to question my value and purpose, and all I could think about was how I had failed. Of course, as a coach and having studied the neuroscience of coaching, of change, of confidence, I could observe the ‘negativity bias’ loop running in full force. For those not familiar with the neuroscience term, negativity bias refers to our proclivity to “attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information” (Vaish, Grossmann, & Woodward, 2008, p. 383). We can think of it as an asymmetry in how we process negative and positive occurrences to understand our world, one in which “negative events elicit more rapid and more prominent responses than non-negative events” (Carretié, Mercado, Tapia, & Hinojosa., 2001, p. 75). This negativity bias served us well when we were constantly in a position of being focused on survival; and in today’s world, this wiring doesn’t always serve us.

I knew what I would tell a coaching client in this same position. I knew I was giving unfair weight to 1 opinion of 28 and allowing 1 opinion to speak far more loudly than the other 27. This allowed me to sit with it. What I came to was that somehow, I didn’t create an environment of psychological safety, at least not for this one student, where we could have processed this feedback in real time. The feedback revolved around an incident early in the course where my brain’s shortcuts failed me and kept me from differentiating between two students. The student noted from that day on, she had little engagement in the course and little regard for me. That made me sad; to think she spent the rest of the course disengaged and check out, and that she didn’t feel safe speaking up sooner made me feel so sad. And this led to the learning. 

That realization led to an important insight: this classroom is its own small organization, and it deserves the same care and intention we study in organizational behavior. As the leader, I am responsible for cultivating psychological safety. Moving forward, I can be more mindful, more proactive, and use this story as a teaching tool—an example of how bias operates quietly in all of us, even those who work to overcome it.

While I did many things right, and for the other 27 students, led well, I left one behind. As a leader, that one matters deeply to me. While I see that most of the feedback was positive or at least constructive, I also challenged myself to sit with this to not leave the lesson behind and to continue to refine. Had I let the negativity bias of my brain completely take over, had I been unable to at least observe what was happening, I may have been unable to get to a place of learning; I am grateful I can get myself off the hamster wheel and to a place of learning. 

As a coach, for a client, I would encourage them to see this as a win; self-awareness is the first step in creating change. I would also encourage them to see and celebrate the ability to step back and view the situation from the perspective of third person. I know it helped me process to think about what I might ask and offer a client in my shoes; this was an important lesson I learned in taking control of the inner critic from Ethan Kross’s book, “Chatter: The Voice in Our Heads, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It.”

There was a time when such a review would have destroyed me. Now, I can sit with the discomfort, understand the processes of my brain, integrate the feedback, and grow. That doesn’t mean I ignore or bury the criticism. It means I don’t let it define me. I’m learning to weight the positive feedback just as heavily as the negative. I’m practicing. I’m building that muscle. This is progress, and I hope to continue to improve in how I handle my brain’s operating system and negativity bias. I’d like to get to a place where I can process more quickly, learn with more efficiency, and also take in the positive feedback with equal weight. This was an opportunity to practice and to work that muscle. 

I’ll keep you posted on that journey!

Questions for reflection: 

Self-Awareness: What emotions or inner narratives surface when you receive a harsh critic, and what do they reveal about your beliefs around success or failure? What automatic thoughts or beliefs arise about yourself when you receive critical feedback? What do these thoughts reveal about your values, fears, or self-concept? In what ways do you tie your self-worth to outcomes and how might this impact your experience of joy or disappointment? How do you differentiate between valid critique and projection, and what criteria may help make that distinction? 

Self-Management: How do you typically respond when things don’t go according to plan, and what strategies help you regulate my emotions in those moments? What practices help you feel grounded in the process rather than fixated on the results? What inner tools or strategies help you interrupt or reframe your negativity bias in real-time? How effective are these strategies currently, and what new ones might you explore? How do you typically respond to perceived failure, and how has that response evolved over time? Where do you see signs of growth in how you handle setbacks?

Social Awareness: How might your experiences—of effort, resilience, or unmet expectations—mirror what others around you are facing? Are you attuned to that? What assumptions do you make about how others perceive your success or struggles, and how might those assumptions affect your behavior? How can you more consistently create environments where others feel psychologically safe enough to speak up—especially when something goes wrong? What subtle cues (verbal or nonverbal) might you be missing that signal discomfort or disengagement?

Relationship Management: How can you share your learning and vulnerability in ways that strengthen connection and trust with others, especially during times of challenge or growth? How can you lead with both strength and humility—acknowledging mistakes without letting them overshadow the positive impact you make? What kind of modeling do you want to offer students (or team members) about handling feedback, owning imperfection, and showing up with courage?

Quote(s) I’ve Been Pondering:

“Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.” 
— Shirley MacLaine
“Negativity is the enemy of creativity.”
 – David Lynch
“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.” 
– Will Rogers

Book I’ve Been Reading: 

Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

By Arthur Brooks

My Key Takeaways:

“The macronutrients of happiness” (9) Brooks defines as enjoyment (“pleasure is animal, enjoyment is human”), satisfaction (the thrill that comes from achieving a goal) (10), and purpose (“When we do have a sense of meaning and purpose, we can face life with hope and inner peace.”) (11).

Brooks calls us to appreciate ‘bad feelings’ and offers that the brain actually reserves space specifically for processing negative emotions (18). “And thank goodness: negative emotions don’t just help us achieve enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose, they also keep us alive” (18).

While it is easy to think of the negativity bias as bad, I also appreciate that these tough emotions are important to our ability to feel the positive emotions like happiness and joy; they provide important juxtaposition. Brooks offers, “Without unhappiness, you wouldn’t survive, learn, or come up with good ideas. Even if you could get rid of your unhappiness, it would be a huge mistake. The secret to the best life is to accept your unhappiness (so you can learn and grow) and manage the feelings that result” (22).

As an EQ believer and coach, I appreciated that Brooks calls out how emotions are “signals to your conscious brain that something requires your attention,” and if you choose to use the alarm system, you then get to decide how to respond (38). He goes on to describe metacognition as “moving the experience of the emotion from the limbic system of the brain to the prefrontal cortex” which is the seat of logic and from where you can actually act with purpose.

Metacognition is offered by Brooks as a “better, healthier, and more permanent solution.” He goes on to offer that it is helpful to consider the emotions that your circumstances are triggering and then to observe them as if they were happening to someone else, and finally, to accept them. He also encourages us to write them down in order to make them fully conscious, and then to consider how we can choose reactions not based on negative emotions but rather on the impacts and outcomes we genuinely would prefer (41). 

Finally, Brooks ended his book with the advice to “find your amazing grace,” which really spoke to me. Grace “allows you to actually see reality. And this leads to a new kind of joy unavailable from any other source” (176). Learning to give myself the empathy, compassion, and grace I extend others has been a challenge, and a worthy goal that I will keep practicing! I noticed that giving myself grace and compassion, sharing my story with two close friends who offered me empathy and perspective in this instance, were key to creating the space to learn and move forward. 

What Amazon has to Say:

You can get happier. And getting there will be the adventure of your lifetime.

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

In Build the Life You Want, Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey invite you to begin a journey toward greater happiness no matter how challenging your circumstances. Drawing on cutting-edge science and their years of helping people translate ideas into action, they show you how to improve your life right now instead of waiting for the outside world to change.

With insight, compassion, and hope, Brooks and Winfrey reveal how the tools of emotional self-management can change your life―immediately. They recommend practical, research-based practices to build the four pillars of happiness: family, friendship, work, and faith. And along the way, they share hard-earned wisdom from their own lives and careers as well as the witness of regular people whose lives are joyful despite setbacks and hardship.

Equipped with the tools of emotional self-management and ready to build your four pillars, you can take control of your present and future rather than hoping and waiting for your circumstances to improve. Build the Life You Want is your blueprint for a better life.

Podcast Connected to My Ponderings and Wanderings:

“Life has to win every day; death only has to win once.” ~ Roy Baumeister

Dr. Roy Baumeister is currently professor of psychology at the University of Queensland and is among the most prolific and most frequently cited psychologists in the world, with over 650 publications. His 40 books include the New York Times bestseller Willpower. His research covers self and identity, self-regulation, interpersonal rejection and the need to belong, sexuality and gender, aggression, self-esteem, meaning, consciousness, free will, and self-presentation. In 2013, he received the William James award for lifetime achievement in psychological science (the Association of Psychological Science’s highest honor), and his latest book, co-authored with John Tierney, is called “The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It.”

In this episode:

• How the human brain has a tendency to focus on the bad – the human mind tends to overfocus on the bad and the negative
• Why bad is processed more thoroughly than good
• The latest research on ego depletion
• Roy’s take on the replication crisis
• Why falsely accused people have trouble repairing their reputation
• Why the bad gets so much more publicity than the good
• Early career researchers and the lack of incentive for exploration
• Why we are wired for bad
• The importance of the Pollyanna principle
• “The rule of 4”
• Roy’s thoughts on the best route to the good life
• Ways we can see the bigger picture
• The “negative Golden Rule”
• How to get on the “low-bad diet”

Arthur Brooks is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public and Nonprofit Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Professor of Management at the Harvard Business School. He is also a columnist at The Atlantic, where he writes the popular weekly “How to Build a Life” column. A world-renown speaker, he talks about human happiness, and words to raise well-being within private companies, universities, public agencies, and community organizations. His latest book, which he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, is called Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier.

People often think that happiness is a static end goal. But in reality, life will always have its ups and downs. According to Arthur, we can make choices that can improve our well-being despite the presence of challenges. He talks about how to find satisfaction through family, friends, meaningful work, and faith. Arthur also shares actionable steps around managing emotions and habits that can help us create a better life. The topics of neuroscience, transcendence, evolutionary psychology, and love are touched upon in this episode.

In this episode:

• Unhappiness is not your enemy
• Faith and transcendental experiences
• Look for real friends, not deal friends
• Work is love made visible
• Love your enemies
• Conflict is not hatred
• Patterns of happiness vs. individual variation
• The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS)
• Emotional substitution
• Overcoming the Negativity Bias
• Keep it Simple

Other podcasts to check out – 

Oprah’s Super Soul Podcast: 

• Build the Life You Want – Episode 1
• Build the Life You Want – Episode 2
• Build the Life You Want – Episode 3
• Introducing the Happiness Lab: Build the Life You Want…Advice from Arthur Brooks and Oprah

~

You can sign up to receive my Three Thoughts for Thursday post as an email on the third Thursday of every month by clicking here.  If you’ve missed any of my Three Thoughts, you can find them all on my blog.  If you enjoyed this post, take a look at June’s Three Thoughts. You may also be interested in reading my four-part Lessons of the Run series –Endurance, Resilience, Rest, and Grit. Take a look at my latest post, “YOU are the MISSING Piece!” and stay tuned for an update to this piece, along with a recent and new 5^th Lesson of the Run – Humility and Adaptability!If you are interested or know someone who may be interested, I also offer leadership and emotional intelligence coaching and workshops. You can find more information on my website, or you can use this link to set up a free 30-minute introduction to coaching session.

As I mentioned, the stroke I had in February 2018 was a pivotal event and valuable turning point in my life; you can read more in my commemorative post. Please join me in celebrating these milestones, turning points, and calls to “winter,” by taking time to celebrate your own milestones and by fully embracing the opportunities in front of you, the value in the little things, and the beauty that surrounds you in this wonderful, messy life. I will forever be grateful for my stroke and the path of integrity I found in its wake.

Over the course of the last two years, I’ve hosted a few local, in-person events here in the Seattle area, like Savor the Sweetness and the Serenity Retreat. The Serenity Retreat was another success! This relaxing and delightful even took place again June 14, 2025; learn more and see the photos below! If you are interested in such local events, please contact me for more information, with any questions, or to join the invite list for future events! Savor the Sweetness will take place again September 20, 2025, so mark your calendars and watch for more information!

I have the privilege of hosting the Emotional Intelligence Special Interest Group for ICFLA.  We  kicked off our 2025 explorations and learning journey on February 25th with guest Dr. J.D. Pincus of AgileBrain, who walked us through The LA Wildfires through the Lens of Emotional Needs: Coaching in Times of Loss.   On Tuesday, June 24^th, we both revisited and explored emotional intelligence in coaching through our topic, Emotional Intelligence Foundations for Coaching and Workplace Impact, with guest Maribel Hines, MBA, SPHR, CPLP. Maribel offered her insights, wisdom, and perspective through her in-house leadership and coaching and EQ practitioner lens. It was a great session as we translated theory and emotional intelligence into action and impact! Stay tuned for more information on the August 26th session with Dr. Joan Flora on From Reactivity to Resilience: Coaching to Soften Reactivity and Strengthen Resilience and register today! 

In 2024, we had Dr. Heather Backstrom, author of Collaborative Confidence, who presented on “Using Stakeholder Mapping to Help Clients Enhance Self-Awareness.”  We explored The Relevance of EI in the Workplace and Exploring and Supporting Confidence in Our Clients, with guest, Irené Turtle, Executive and Team Coach. In August, I hosted and spoke on the topic of “Decision-Making and Anxiety in the Workplace”. We closed the year on October 22nd with guest Dr. Sohee Jun, who spoke on the topic of How to Be” vs. “Who We Are”: Confidence and Authenticity in the Workplace. If these sorts of topics intrigue you, please come join us! You do not need to be a coach or a member of ICFLA to attend these sessions. Please join me for our remaining sessions in 2025, taking place June 24th, August and October!

I have also joined forces with James Garrett at BrainByDesign, where I have had the distinct privilege of working with colleagues, Paula Miles and Sandra Clifton, to support aspiring female leaders in the workshop series, The Brain Science Advantage for Women Leaders. This 8-week course takes a deep dive into the brain science of habits, productivity, fear and happiness, and includes 8 live sessions with James, Paula, Sandra and me where we dive even deeper into related issues specifically relevant to women. Check it out and join us as we begin a new journey in September! Also check out the latest work at BrainByDesign – The Confidence Challenge and The Confident Finisher Program – and leverage neuroscience to overcome the roadblocks in your brain to achieve your most important goals!

If you are interested in joining and co-creating these learning communities, please use the links above to learn more about ICFLA’s Emotional Intelligence Special Interest Group, BrainByDesign, and the Women’s Events. I hope you will come along for the journey!

I’m always looking for new inspiration, new books to read, and new podcasts to listen to, so please send your suggestions my way or comment on this post to offer some new recommendations! As always, thank you for your continued support and readership! Stay strong, stay brave, stay true to you!

Wishing you a season of noticing and bringing awareness to your deeply encoded negativity biases, taking steps to process the information your brain is trying to offer, and keeping perspective and celebrating each and every small win on the journey to becoming your best self! Thank you for being a part of my journey!