Negativity bias

Negative stimuli have bigger impact on the mental state

Cause

• A combination of positive and negative items/events/etc. tends to skew towards an overall more negative interpretation.
• The conceptualization of negativity is more elaborate and complex than that of positively.

Consequences

• In social judgments, people consider negative information to be more important to impression formation.
• People tend to think and reason more about negative events than positive events.