Negativity effect

Amazingly, everyone in life has been affected by the negativity effect; or to give it its clinical name, the Nocebo effect. Initially, it is an unavoidable behavior trait, but once aware of its affects, you can begin eradicating it, so you achieve your life’s desires.

What is the Nocebo or negativity effect? Basically, it is the result of being influenced, through actions, knowledge or verbal communication, so your character and persona express negative traits, determining your behavior, thoughts and communication when dealing with situations.

A negativity effect refers to the greater weight given to negative information relative to equally extreme and equally likely positive information in a variety of information-processing tasks. In psychology, the negativity effect is the tendency of people, when evaluating the causes of the behaviors of a person they dislike, to attribute their positive behaviors to the environment and their negative behaviors to the person's inherent nature. The negativity effect is the inverse of the positivity effect, which is found when people evaluate the causes of the behaviors of a person they like. Both effects are attributional biases. The negativity effect plays a role in producing the fundamental attribution error, a major contributor to prejudice.

It's said in politics that the negativity effect is more influential with voters than the positivity effect.

The term negativity effect also refers to the tendency of some people to assign more weight to negative information in descriptions of others. Research has shown that the negativity effect in this sense is quite common, especially with younger people; older adults, however, display less of this tendency and more of the opposite tendency (the positivity effect).

Now we understand the negativity effect, how can we counteract this? It relies on reprogramming the mind. The mind was initially programmed with the negativity effect, so now we must reprogram our mind to think differently.

Two therapies exist, which achieve this quickly and painlessly. These are Hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Many of us have witnessed how hypnosis encourages us to act differently to our normal behavior, simply by influencing our thoughts. However, if hypnosis is used as a professional therapy, the mind can be reprogrammed, to alleviate fears, encouraging a more positive attitude, breaking the chains which stunt our development.

NLP is a similar therapy, developed by Richard Bandler. It involves understanding how the negativity effect began; rationally observing the results it has had; identifying the boundaries it has formed and understanding how the negativity effect now prevents personal development and progression. By using NLP techniques, people learn different thought patterns, resulting in a more rational and positive approach to situations.

See also

References