Written by / First Psychology Writers
Editor / Tommy
Have you ever had such a stage:
You find yourself in a state of bad luck for a period of time, and nothing goes well in your daily life, as if your previous good fortune has dissipated silently and the future seems to be bright, causing you to fall into a negative mood.
If you are currently in such a difficult situation, the following analysis may be of great benefit to you.
When you feel that your good fortune is gone and unfortunate events continue to occur, it is a sign that you are beginning to reflect on your current situation, which is the first step in a good direction.
In fact, your luck doesn't disappear for no reason, and there is always a reason behind the constant bad luck.
However, when we evaluate our own life situation, we are often susceptible to negative information that even outweighs the effect of positive information, a phenomenon known as "negativity bias".
Lasen, a psychologist, conducted a research experiment on negativity bias in 1998.
In the experiment, participants were given a device to monitor brain wave activity, and were presented with multiple images containing positive, neutral, and negative elements, and after viewing each image, participants were asked to choose whether they were associated with positive, neutral, or negative things through a computer.
The results of the study showed that participants had significantly increased activity in certain brain regions when they thought about negative things.
Therefore, your luck is not suddenly gone, but there is a trace.
This suggests that people tend to remember negative things more deeply, and this depth of impression even exceeds that of positive things of the same level.
In addition, once we have formed a mindset that we consider ourselves unlucky, it is easy to assume that things will not go well in the future.
The well-known Murphy's Law states that
If you think that something is likely to go in a bad direction, it will definitely develop to the worst degree.
In his book The Courage to Be Hated, Alfred Adler mentions,
The fact that it is not anyone else who determines your lifestyle (state of life) but yourself.
Adler, as one of the authorities in the field of psychology, was influenced by the psychoanalytic school in his early years, but the individual psychology he later proposed was actually a challenge to traditional psychoanalysis.
The psychoanalytic school, which values causality and fatalism, holds that the fate of an individual is fixed from the moment of birth, often leads to helplessness.
However, although our past experiences have shaped our behavior patterns, if we indulge in fatalism too much, we will lose the ability to actively change.
Therefore, Adler believes that we should be brave enough to pursue self-change and transcendence, challenging the fixed mindset brought about by fatalism, and he believes that our misfortune is not inevitable, but something we can choose and change.
When we feel that something bad is happening and we want to change our current situation, we first need to adjust our mindset and work to overcome our negativity.
By looking at life objectively, we can make adjustments that are truly beneficial to us.
According to a 2011 study by psychologists Kiken and Shook, they found that using mindfulness techniques can significantly reduce negativity bias in evaluations.
Mindfulness, which originated in zazen and meditation, is a type of conscious observation and attention to what is happening in the moment without judging or reacting to it.
For example, you can imagine yourself as a pebble at the bottom of a stream, just quietly watching the flow of water without distractions.
Mindfulness has now developed into a well-established psychotherapy that can be used when we feel anxious, depressed, or need to relax, and has a significant mental health boost.
In Kiken and Shook's experiment, they divided the participants into two groups:
One group received scientific mindfulness training, while the other group received ordinary concentration training. Afterwards, participants participate in a game about classifying beans as positive or negative, and they need to understand the positive and negative characteristics that the beans represent.
Experiments have shown that the group that received mindfulness training was less affected by negativity bias in the formation of perceptions, while the group that received concentration training only showed more negativity bias.
Now that we know that mindfulness can help us overcome negativity,
Proper mindfulness practice should consist of the following three core elements:
1. Consciously focus.
In mindfulness training, we need to focus our attention on one focus, whether it's our own breath or feeling the wind blowing through our hair.
In today's information fragmentation society, it's easy to get distracted by the hustle and bustle of our surroundings. To be effective in mindfulness, we first need to train our ability to concentrate.
2. Avoid judging and judging.
We usually have preconceived judgments when evaluating things, and it seems that we always have to make some kind of evaluation about the people and things we meet, but in reality, the world is not either/or, and sometimes it doesn't even need to be explicit.
To practice mindfulness, we need to maintain a peaceful state of mind and accept things as they happen without judging and judging.
3. Perceive the present.
In mindfulness training, it is often said:
"Imagine yourself as a pebble under a stream and watch the stream flow"
This phrase emphasizes experiencing and perceiving the present moment.
This includes the awareness of external events that are happening, as well as the internal feelings, which are objectively happening, and the internal aspects that are our thoughts and physical feelings.
This part of mindfulness practice is very important and it helps us to truly experience and feel the present moment.
Through the practice of mindfulness in our daily lives, we can
Using mindfulness techniques to reduce negativity bias allows us to look at life more objectively and actively seek solutions, rather than indulging in pessimism that "good fortune is gone and the future will only get worse".
The End -
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Keywords in this article: negativity bias, psychology
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