Negativity Bias.

What do you see?

A black dot.

Anything else?

Just a black dot.

That’s all?

What about the rest of the page? The white?

This is what we call The Negativity Bias.

The notion that things of a more negative nature have a greater psychological impact on us. And stick.

The bad review.
The rude stranger.
The snarky comment.
The experiences that register immediately.
And distract us from the big picture.

The truth is that one bad event is more memorable than a thousand good ones.

And that it takes 15 seconds longer for positive experiences to enter our long-term memory.

So we have to spend more time telling ourselves the good things.

It takes more work. More effort.

But once you start seeing the whole page, the dot doesn’t seem so important after all.