Originally published 2020-05-16.
Why does one piece of criticism outlast a dozen compliments? Social psychologist Alison Ledgerwood of the University of California, Davis, studied exactly that question. Her experiments suggest that once people see something as a loss, they struggle to see it any other way, even when they later hear the very same facts described as a gain. Moving from good to bad is quick; moving from bad back to good takes deliberate effort.
The encouraging part is that this effort can be practised. Below you will find what her research showed, why the mind behaves this way, and small, realistic habits that help you get unstuck.
The question behind the talk
Ledgerwood gave her talk, "Getting stuck in the negatives (and how to get unstuck)", at TEDxUCDavis in 2013. She opens with a personal puzzle many people will recognise. As an academic she submits papers to journals, and some get accepted while others get turned down. She noticed that a single rejection could cloud her whole day, even when good news about another paper had arrived at the same time.
That raised a broader question. Psychologists already knew that the way a choice is described changes how people feel about it: the familiar glass can be presented as half full or half empty. What nobody had looked at closely was what happens when you try to switch frames. Can people flip freely between the two descriptions, or does the first one leave a mark?
The surgery experiment and what it showed
To test this, Ledgerwood and her colleague Amber Boydstun described an imaginary new surgical procedure to volunteers. Half heard it framed as a gain, with a 70 percent success rate. The other half heard it framed as a loss, with a 30 percent failure rate. Mathematically, the two statements are identical.
As decades of framing research would predict, people in the success group rated the operation more favourably. Then the researchers swapped the frames. Volunteers who had started with the success rate were now told about the failure rate, and their approval dropped. Volunteers who had started with the failure rate were now told about the success rate, yet their opinion barely improved. The loss frame had stuck.
The team published the findings in 2014 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General under the title "Sticky prospects: Loss frames are cognitively stickier than gain frames." Their conclusion was not that people are hopelessly pessimistic. It was that the mind treats the two directions differently: a negative reading spreads easily, while a positive one needs to be actively rebuilt.
Why it matters outside the lab
The same pattern shows up in ordinary life. A news headline about job losses can shape how people feel about the economy long after better figures appear. A sharp remark from a colleague can colour an entire week of otherwise fine meetings. Knowing that the brain leans this way does not remove the effect, but it explains why "just think positive" so rarely works on its own.
Why the brain leans towards the negative
Ledgerwood's work fits into a large body of research on what psychologists call negativity bias. In a widely cited 2001 review titled "Bad is stronger than good", Roy Baumeister and colleagues gathered evidence that unpleasant events, feedback and information tend to have a stronger and longer-lasting effect than pleasant ones of a similar size. In the same year, Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman described how a mix of good and bad elements is often judged as worse than the sum of its parts.
Closely related is loss aversion, a core idea in Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky's prospect theory: losing a sum of money tends to feel worse than gaining the same amount feels good. Their famous 1981 "Asian disease" problem showed that people choose differently when an outcome is described in terms of lives saved rather than lives lost, even though the numbers are the same.
A common explanation is that paying close attention to threats was useful for survival. That idea is plausible, but it is a hypothesis rather than a settled fact, and researchers still debate how strong and universal the bias is. Some studies, for instance, suggest older adults pay relatively more attention to positive information than younger adults do.
Practical ways to get unstuck
If a negative frame sticks by default, the answer is to give the positive one some extra, intentional help. Ledgerwood's suggestions are simple and fit into a normal day.
Write down what went well
Spend a few minutes, ideally at the end of the day, noting specific things that went right. Studies of gratitude writing, including well-known work by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough in 2003, found that people who regularly listed things they were thankful for reported somewhat higher well-being than comparison groups. The effects are modest, not magical, but they are cheap to try.
Rehearse and share good news
Most of us are fluent complainers. When friends ask how the week went, the delayed train and the difficult client come to mind first. Try deliberately telling the good part of the story too: the problem you solved, the kind message you received. Retelling a positive event gives it more of the mental weight that negative events get automatically.
Reframe on purpose
When you catch yourself stuck on a "30 percent failure" view of something, ask what the "70 percent success" description would be. You are not denying the risk; you are making sure both halves of the picture are actually in view before you decide how you feel.
Break the chain of snapping
Because negativity spreads, a short-tempered exchange tends to travel. Someone is curt with you, you are curt with the next person, and so on. Choosing patience, a generous tip or a friendly word at that moment can stop the chain, and kindness can travel along the same routes that irritation does.
Myths about positive thinking
Myth: positive people never notice problems. The research does not ask anyone to ignore real risks. A loss frame is often accurate and useful. The goal is balance, so that bad news does not automatically crowd out equally true good news.
Myth: you can simply decide to feel better. Ledgerwood's point is almost the opposite. Shifting from negative to positive takes work and repetition, which is why habits such as journaling help more than a one-off resolution.
Myth: optimism replaces professional help. Reframing exercises are everyday tools, not a treatment. If low mood, anxiety or hopelessness last for weeks or interfere with daily life, talk to a doctor or a qualified mental health professional.
A small experiment to try this week
Pick one situation that regularly drags you down, such as a tense weekly meeting or a long commute. For seven days, write two or three lines afterwards about anything in it that went acceptably or well. At the end of the week, read the notes back. Many people find that the situation was less uniformly bad than their memory claimed.
That is the heart of Ledgerwood's message: the mind is not broken for leaning negative, but the lean is real, and it can be balanced with a little steady, intentional practice.
Sources: Alison Ledgerwood, "Getting stuck in the negatives (and how to get unstuck)", TEDxUCDavis; Ledgerwood & Boydstun, "Sticky prospects", Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (2014); Negativity bias (Wikipedia); Framing effect (Wikipedia); first summarised by The Power of Ideas.
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