Why Good Is More Alike Than Bad: Processing Implications

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2016.12.006

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Volume 21, Issue 2, February 2017, Pages 69-79

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.12.006 Get rights and content

Trends

Valence asymmetries describe differences in how humans process positive and negative information. They are evident at all stages of information processing and have been summarized under the observation that ‘bad is stronger than good’.

Many researchers have argued that valence asymmetries result from internal affective reactions. Because negative information is more relevant for well-being, it elicits a strong affective reaction, which triggers deeper and more elaborate processing.

We provide an alternative explanation for valence asymmetries in cognitive processing based on the observation that positive information is more similar than negative information. We argue that this similarity difference is inherent in the information environment. It results from the well-established assumption that positive states are non-extreme. Most attribute dimensions host one (non-extreme) positive range framed by two (extreme) negative ranges. Consequently, positive persons, objects, or words are more similar to one another than negative ones.

Positive information's higher similarity provides a viable alternative explanation for valence asymmetries because interstimulus similarity influences all stages of cognitive processing.

Humans process positive information and negative information differently. These valence asymmetries in processing are often summarized under the observation that ‘bad is stronger than good’, meaning that negative information has stronger psychological impact (e.g., in feedback, learning, or social interactions). This stronger impact is usually attributed to people's affective or motivational reactions to evaluative information. We present an alternative interpretation of valence asymmetries based on the observation that positive information is more similar than negative information. We explain this higher similarity based on the non-extremity of positive attributes, discuss how it accounts for observable valence asymmetries in cognitive processing, and show how it predicts hitherto undiscovered phenomena.

Section snippets

Processing Positive and Negative Information

The evaluation of information as good or bad is one of the most central aspects of human functioning 1, 2. Psychologists have long recognized that valence is probably the most basic psychological dimension on which people can easily locate any stimulus. Positive and negative, good and bad, can be interpreted as two symmetrical poles of this evaluative dimension, like hot and cold, or black and white. Therefore, one may argue that positive and negative information should constitute two equal and

Positive Information Is More Alike Than Negative Information

As noted by Leo Tolstoy in the opening of his novel Anna Karenina, ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Recent psychological research suggests that Tolstoy's observation even holds true in the broadest formulation that different pieces of positive information are alike whereas different pieces of negative information are negative in their own way. We argue that this similarity asymmetry is a robust and general characteristic of the environment humans

Similarity As an Explanatory Construct

In sum, across different domains of psychological research and across different stimulus domains, positive information is more similar than negative information. However, some researchers have questioned the usefulness of similarity as an explanatory construct for cognitive processing. The main argument is that stimuli may be similar to one another in different respects and global similarity judgments are therefore highly context dependent [33]. By contrast, global similarity measures typically

Why Positive Information Is More Alike Than Negative Information

The question remains ‘why’ this asymmetry exists and whether it is a feature of the cognitive system or a feature of the ecology (see Outstanding Questions). The first position follows from the affective or motivational potential of evaluative information (Box 1). Accordingly, confrontation with a negative stimulus elicits negative affect, which triggers deeper processing, resulting in a more differentiated mental representation. However, we argue that positive information's higher similarity

Implications of Positive Information's Higher Similarity for Cognitive Processing

As discussed, valence asymmetries in cognitive processing are often explained by the stronger affective or motivational potential of negative information, which triggers deeper and more elaborate processing ([8], Box 1). Here, we discuss how positive information's higher similarity may account for a number of well-known valence asymmetries. We argue that these asymmetries occur not because ‘bad is stronger than good’ [7], but because good is more alike than bad. Some of our suggestions remain

Concluding Remarks and Future Perspectives

There is ample evidence that affective reactions within the individual alter information processing (Box 1). Specifically, negative affect triggers deeper and more elaborate processing. Affective and motivational explanation are therefore viable candidates to explain differences in the processing of positive information and negative information. However, we suggest that processing asymmetries may also be due to structural properties of the information itself (Box 2). Specifically, positive

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; UN 273/4-1) awarded to the third author.

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²: These authors contributed equally to this manuscript. Order of the first two authors was determined by a coin toss

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Trends in Cognitive Sciences

OpinionWhy Good Is More Alike Than Bad: Processing Implications

Trends

Section snippets

Processing Positive and Negative Information

Positive Information Is More Alike Than Negative Information

Similarity As an Explanatory Construct

Why Positive Information Is More Alike Than Negative Information

Implications of Positive Information's Higher Similarity for Cognitive Processing

Concluding Remarks and Future Perspectives

Acknowledgments

Adv. Exp. Soc. Psychol.

J. Exp. Soc. Psychol.

J. Res. Pers.

Adv. Exp. Soc. Psychol.

Behav. Res. Ther.

Clin. Psychol. Rev.

Cogn. Psychol.

Are emotions natural kinds?

Perspect. Psychol. Sci.

A Dynamic Theory of Personality

Automatic vigilance: the attention grabbing power of negative social information

J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.

Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: the negativity bias in evaluative categorizations

J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.

A puzzle about affect and recognition memory

J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn.

Bad is stronger than good

Rev. Gen. Psychol.

Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: the mobilization-minimization hypothesis

Psychol. Bull.

A general valence asymmetry in similarity: good is more alike than bad

J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn.

Attention, similarity, and the identification–categorization relationship

J. Exp. Psychol. Gen.

Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (No. 1)

Toward a universal law of generalization for psychological science

Science

Representative design and probabilistic theory in a functional psychology

Psychol. Rev.

Field Theory in Social Science

Beware of samples! A cognitive-ecological sampling approach to judgment biases

Psychol. Rev.

From intrapsychic to ecological theories in social psychology: outlines of a functional theory approach

Eur. J. Soc. Psychol.

Attractive faces are only average

Psychol. Sci.

The evolutionary psychology of facial beauty

Ann. Rev. Psychol.

Just another pretty face”: a multidimensional scaling approach to face attractiveness and variability

Psychon. Bull. Rev.

It's not just average faces that are attractive: computer-manipulated averageness makes birds, fish, and automobiles attractive

Psychon. Bull. Rev.

Prototypes are attractive because they are easy on the mind

Psychol. Sci.

The letter of recommendation effect in informant ratings of personality

J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.

‘Are we talking about the same person here?.’ Interrater agreement in judgments of personality varies dramatically with how much the perceivers like the targets

Soc. Psychol. Pers. Sci.

Few ways to love, but many ways to hate: attribute ambiguity and the positivity effect in agent evaluation

J. Consum. Res.

On the automatic activation of attitudes

J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.

The generality of the automatic evaluation effect

J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.

Why positive information is processed faster: the density hypothesis

J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.

Positivity advantages in social information processing

Soc. Pers. Psychol. Compass

Norms of valence, arousal, and dominance for 13,915 English lemmas

Behav. Res. Methods

Topics in semantic representation

Psychol. Rev.

Representing word meaning and order information in a composite holographic lexicon

Psychol. Rev.

The role of theories in conceptual coherence

Psychol. Rev.

Respects for similarity

Psychol. Rev.

Exemplar-based accounts of relations between classification, recognition, and typicality

Opinion
Why Good Is More Alike Than Bad: Processing Implications