The power of negative example?

[DokiDokiTsuna]

A few weeks ago, I was watching a TED Talk given by this architect/design critic who was basically saying that negativity is a more powerful teaching tool than positivity because, in her words, when you say you like something, even that you really like something, people have a tendency to not care (I'm sure we've all experienced that before...sadface). But if you say you HATE something, automatically people want to know, "why?" It grabs their attention.

I don't know how true this is...I live and breathe negativity; I haven't experienced enough positivity to make a comparison. ^^; But one thing I HAVE noticed is the tendency of style-centric topics on this forum to devolve into 'tropes we all hate' festivals. It's hilarious, and it's fun...but it's also kind of repetitive and a little...intriguing. Why does this keep happening? Is it the power of negativity in action??

To offer a biological/evolutionary perspective on the issue (good god; my psych classes have trained me too well) I would restate that the human brain is wired to focus on and remember the negative example above all else. Your mama tells you over and over not to touch the hot stove, but you never really learn until you finally burn your hand. After you have that first car accident, suddenly all the thousands of safe car trips you've taken in the past mean nothing compared to the fear.
Humans are built to survive, and a good way to do that is to pay attention when bad things happen to you and to other people, so you can avoid them in the future. Which would explain why negativity of all kinds is so interesting to us.

But what's your perspective? And if you believe in the power of negativity, do you also believe it's the way things should be?

[GamerPrincessXI]

Maybe it's all self doubt or self worth issue.

[arcojawa]

Hmm.............

......... if your talking about it from an evolutionary perspective the focus on negativity may be..... what is it called? A vestigial trait. Basically, we used to have a lot of things that could kill us. Bears, lions, germs, bad food, tripping over in the wrong spot until very recently in our history practically everything was a threat to our lives. You compare not but 500 years ago to the modern era and it's absurd. Some illnesses used to have a %10 survival rate and these days it's like, "eh, take a pill and suck it up". With that in mind, it's not surprising that we were wired to focus on the negative. It probably helped us survive to what we are now.
Problem is... these days, especially in first-world countries, we don't have a whole lot of threats. Most people don't have to worry about getting eaten by a bear or dying to a relatively common and non-incredible disease in their 20's. Despite this we're still wired with this.... probably-a-defense mechanism. It's meant to keep us safe from things that don't really matter to us anymore. Maybe we'll evolve out of it but the weird thing to think about is............. how does evolution in humans even work at this point? The way evolution usually works is the fittest or best equipped survive but we have no normal threats. We're still attracted to the fittest members of our species despite the fact that fitness, while still worthwhile, is less necessary then it used to be. Ideally we'd be attracted to the most sensible of our species but A: we're not, and B: we're probably bad judges of that.

tldr: Humans might be attracted to negativity because evolution wasn't prepared for a species with almost no natural threats to it's existence. But, well, that's just my opinion.

[yansusu]

But if you say you HATE something, automatically people want to know, "why?" It grabs their attention.

In regard to that, I'd say that it doesn't depend on whether somebody says they like or don't like something. It entirely depends on my take on said thing. Let's say we're talking about a movie. If I liked it and the person likes it, then I'd love to talk about just what we liked about it. If they liked it but I thought it was awful, I'd like to know what they thought was so good about that and would say what I didn't like. If they don't like something I like, I'd also want to know why/why not. And if we both don't like something, then we could rant about it together.
If it is something I don't know at all (e.g. I've never seen the movie nor heard of it), then regardless of whether that person loves it or hates it, I probably won't care as much. Maybe I'll care if I like the person telling me about it or feel they have good taste because then I might decide based on what they say whether I'd like to see the movie or not. If I don't know the person or don't care about them, then their opinion on something won't really interest me regardless of what it is.

So rather than saying it has to do with positivity or negativity, I'd say it depends on the circumstances of me, my relationship with that person and my relationship to the thing we talk about. (An afterthought: If it's a topic I'm very passionate about, I might still get involved even if I don't care about the person.)

[Likri]

I think it's just funner to rip things apart, than to sing praises. Well, maybe not fun, but easier to convey to people who might not be familiar with the source in question. Example - you can tell someone that the romance plot is soooo good and recommend a series to your friend, and, going into all the small details why it's good might not stir up their emotional feedback, since they either would like ti gush over it firsthand, or they might recall similar example and reminisce on them. Ranting about something bad? Oh, they sure can recall something that frustrated them just as much, at least in the same tropes - they don't need to experience your source firsthand to know exactly what you're feeling.

Plus, people usually have a lot more built up frustration in them, that they don't always have a safe or socially accepted way to get rid off, and ranting about media is one of the most common ways, since stories are designed to get an emotional response out of us.

[Tanzer]

I think people can be really self conscious in sharing the stuff they like, so are way more passive which can make the topic they are talking about not seem as interesting as a result, whereas negativity is way more acceptable, can be funny and shows a lot of passion behind their words. Which is why I think it's important to be passionate about the things you enjoy! People are drawn to strong emotions whether they are negative or positive, negativity is just sadly more acceptable right now.