Negative information carries more weight than equally strong positive information.
Rozin and Royzman's 2001 review: bad is stronger than good across impressions, learning and relationships. Gottman's observational work on marital conflict is a separate finding, in which stable couples spent roughly five times as much coded time in positive or neutral affect as in negative affect during conflict discussions.
In practice
- A supplier with 200 flawless deliveries and one bad one is discussed at the next four meetings.
- A restaurant with nine excellent reviews and one appalling one loses bookings, and the arithmetic average is not what readers use.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind