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The Power of Bad: And How to Overcome It
From the international bestselling authors of Willpower
Why does a bad impression last longer than a good one? Why does losing money affect us more than gaining it? What makes phobias so hard to shake?
The answer is the negativity bias - or in other words, the power of bad. As John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister show, we are wired to react to bad over good. It makes sense in evolutionary terms, but in our modern world the lure of bad is, well, bad. It governs people's moods, drives marketing and dominates our news. It can explain everything from why wars start or couples divorce, to why we mess up job interviews or feud with neighbours.
But there is good news. By using smart strategies from new science, we can train our brains to get better at spotting our own negativity bias, fighting back with our rational minds to manage the bad in our lives - and even using its power for positive results.
Breaking bad's hold over us can help our own lives, at work and in our relationships. Properly understood, bad can be a good thing.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 31, 2019
414 people are currently reading
3777 people want to read
About the author
John Tierney
20 books36 followersJohn Marion Tierney is a journalist who has worked for the New York Times since 1990.
Tierney writes a science column, Findings, and the TierneyLab blog for the Times. The TierneyLab takes a contrarian view about science and society:
(Further information can be found at Wikipedia, and at the author's biographical page at the New York Times.)
Tierney writes a science column, Findings, and the TierneyLab blog for the Times. The TierneyLab takes a contrarian view about science and society:
The Lab's work is guided by two founding principles:Tierney identifies himself as a libertarian, and has become increasingly identified with libertarianism. His columns have been critical of rent stabilization, the war on drugs, Amtrak and compulsory recycling. His 1996 article "Recycling Is Garbage" broke the New York Times Magazine's hate mail record.
1. Just because an idea appeals to a lot of people doesn't mean it's wrong.
2. But that's a good working theory.
(Further information can be found at Wikipedia, and at the author's biographical page at the New York Times.)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 192 reviews
April 27, 2020
So, I got up to chapter 5 and then stopped half way through that. I had been thinking of stopping well before then – but it is a while since I have read a book like this and it has all of the features a book like this inevitably has – a sporting example, a pilot in deep trouble example, a marriage break up example – part of me kept reading out of the perverse pleasure of seeing these tropes play out one more time.
Anyway, then the bio-babble started. You now, ‘MMR imaging has shown that it is within this third fold of the prefrontal cerebral lobe that the desire to pick your nose in public is born’. Having read the wonderful Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine (just read it – burn this, and buy that, it is really that simple), I treat all forms of bio-babble with equal disdain. Particularly if they seem to provide justification for something iffy that probably has a much clearer and much less problematic social explanation. There was even some crazy references to a couple of just-so stories from evolutionary psychology – like I said, I had been gritting my teach for a while, but plodded on just the same.
They talked about IQ as if it is something fixed – seriously? I smiled to myself. And they spoke of this as if it is something that was not contested within the field. Alarm bells were ringing by this stage, obviously. This was good in a way, because I was by then in the position of realising that some of the bits I had agreed with the authors on early in the book, might just be due to these conforming to my own prejudices. Nothing wrong with that, in itself – but since I couldn’t trust so much else in the book, I thought I would need to think over those assumptions too.
If you glance over my shelves you might notice that I’ve spent a bit of time reading into educational research. It has become a bit of an obsession for me over the last decade. One of the great tragedies in the US education system – one that many people in the Australian and UK education systems seem hell bent on replicating – is the deeply traumatic experience of charter schools. These schools invariably get a fantastic rap in books like this – and anyone who has any knowledge of educational research and who criticises these schools are invariably presented as either dupes for the teacher unions, naïve do-gooders who can’t follow research literature, or unreconstructed hippies who think love will save the world. We are then presented with ‘evidence’ that the punitive, arbitrary and downright nasty school environments in many of these charter schools (often with ‘achieve’ in their names) have been proven within the research literature to be highly effective. I know that no such peer reviewed research that proves this exists. I know because I spent ages looking for it as part of my role as a research fellow in a university that specialises in educational research.
The supposed unequivocal research is then generally read to say that high stakes assessments and pedagogies for children should be matched with high stakes employment structures for teachers. Seemingly ironically, this is then taken to mean that teacher preparation more generally is almost irrelevant, as long as classrooms are structured so as to be punitive, focused on outcomes, and data driven. A systematic analysis of much of the research into the Teach for America programme, often presented as an exemplar of such programmes, can be found here https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/defau...
Overall, charter schools in the US have not been proven to perform better than public schools, some have better outcomes, some much worse, overall they tend to preform as well as similar public schools – some good books on this are Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools or The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, but you would never think that from reading books like this one. Rather, you would imagine charter schools are incomparably better and that this is self-evidently true for any ‘unbiased’ observer of the research. This is simply not the case. Worse, the mere existence of charter schools effectively defunds an already financially struggling public school system. I literally could not read on after being confronted by this litany of half-truths, teacher bashing and ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ nonsense this book peddles as substantiated fact.
Books like this make me furious and they are part of the reason why I am so distrustful of psychology.
I also need to learn to trust my instincts more – shortly after starting this I felt like I was being lied to, and the whiff in my nose slowly rose to the intensity you experience after getting into a small car with a shoe covered in dogshit. When they started to present the same, inexcusable marketing material designed by and for the charter school movement, I knew had had more than enough.
Anyway, then the bio-babble started. You now, ‘MMR imaging has shown that it is within this third fold of the prefrontal cerebral lobe that the desire to pick your nose in public is born’. Having read the wonderful Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine (just read it – burn this, and buy that, it is really that simple), I treat all forms of bio-babble with equal disdain. Particularly if they seem to provide justification for something iffy that probably has a much clearer and much less problematic social explanation. There was even some crazy references to a couple of just-so stories from evolutionary psychology – like I said, I had been gritting my teach for a while, but plodded on just the same.
They talked about IQ as if it is something fixed – seriously? I smiled to myself. And they spoke of this as if it is something that was not contested within the field. Alarm bells were ringing by this stage, obviously. This was good in a way, because I was by then in the position of realising that some of the bits I had agreed with the authors on early in the book, might just be due to these conforming to my own prejudices. Nothing wrong with that, in itself – but since I couldn’t trust so much else in the book, I thought I would need to think over those assumptions too.
If you glance over my shelves you might notice that I’ve spent a bit of time reading into educational research. It has become a bit of an obsession for me over the last decade. One of the great tragedies in the US education system – one that many people in the Australian and UK education systems seem hell bent on replicating – is the deeply traumatic experience of charter schools. These schools invariably get a fantastic rap in books like this – and anyone who has any knowledge of educational research and who criticises these schools are invariably presented as either dupes for the teacher unions, naïve do-gooders who can’t follow research literature, or unreconstructed hippies who think love will save the world. We are then presented with ‘evidence’ that the punitive, arbitrary and downright nasty school environments in many of these charter schools (often with ‘achieve’ in their names) have been proven within the research literature to be highly effective. I know that no such peer reviewed research that proves this exists. I know because I spent ages looking for it as part of my role as a research fellow in a university that specialises in educational research.
The supposed unequivocal research is then generally read to say that high stakes assessments and pedagogies for children should be matched with high stakes employment structures for teachers. Seemingly ironically, this is then taken to mean that teacher preparation more generally is almost irrelevant, as long as classrooms are structured so as to be punitive, focused on outcomes, and data driven. A systematic analysis of much of the research into the Teach for America programme, often presented as an exemplar of such programmes, can be found here https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/defau...
Overall, charter schools in the US have not been proven to perform better than public schools, some have better outcomes, some much worse, overall they tend to preform as well as similar public schools – some good books on this are Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools or The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, but you would never think that from reading books like this one. Rather, you would imagine charter schools are incomparably better and that this is self-evidently true for any ‘unbiased’ observer of the research. This is simply not the case. Worse, the mere existence of charter schools effectively defunds an already financially struggling public school system. I literally could not read on after being confronted by this litany of half-truths, teacher bashing and ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ nonsense this book peddles as substantiated fact.
Books like this make me furious and they are part of the reason why I am so distrustful of psychology.
I also need to learn to trust my instincts more – shortly after starting this I felt like I was being lied to, and the whiff in my nose slowly rose to the intensity you experience after getting into a small car with a shoe covered in dogshit. When they started to present the same, inexcusable marketing material designed by and for the charter school movement, I knew had had more than enough.
November 30, 2021
"Take the bad with the good, we stoically tell ourselves. But that’s not how the brain works. Our minds and lives are skewed by a fundamental imbalance that is just now becoming clear to scientists: Bad is stronger than good..."
I decided to read this one a second time, and so I thought I'd update my review. The book has some excellent writing, and was a very well put together work, in general.
The potential reader of this book can safely disregard the top review here. Ironically enough - the authors mention his specific kind of review in their book, with hilarious effect. Too bad that irony will be lost on him...
Author Roy F. Baumeister is a social psychologist who is known for his work on the self, social rejection, belongingness, sexuality and sex differences, self-control, self-esteem, self-defeating behaviors, motivation, aggression, consciousness, and free will.
Roy F. Baumeister:
The book hits the ground running, with a formidable prologue. The authors open the book with the quote at the start of this review. Since I'm not sure which of the two credited authors wrote what, I'll just refer to them as "the authors" in this review; for simplicity's sake.
The authors did a great job with this one. The book is written in easy, accessible prose that should have no trouble holding the attention of even the scientifically illiterate layperson. Points awarded here, as this seems to be a rather rare talent that eludes many authors. The book contains many super-interesting bits of writing, and is peppered with many humorous asides throughout.
The negativity bias is incredibly interesting. An evolutionary mechanism; the authors note that an organism that does not place a premium on negative information is unlikely to enjoy evolutionary fitness. Our brains are wired to consider both positive and negative inputs, but the negative bypasses our prefrontal cortex, where most of our higher-ordered thinking takes place and is sent directly to the amygdala, where it can be acted on in an incredibly fast manner.
Baumeister has distilled the negativity bias down to a simple maxim, which can be expressed as a rough 4:1 rule. That is; there needs to be roughly 4 "good" things to happen, to offset 1 "bad" thing. This shows up in psychology over and over - from relationships, to business dealing, to many other aspects of life.
The authors also go over the "carrot and stick" systems of operant conditioning. In today's climate, "stick" approaches are widely rebuked, in favour of nicer "carrot" approaches. Unfortunately, however; the various "carrot" approaches are not as effective as different "stick" approaches - given the evolutionary import of the negativity bias.
The book also covers mob mentality, moral panics, and many other related topics of the bias towards negativity.
Also discussed here are some tangentially related anecdotal stories that were really interesting, among them:
• Felix Baumgartner's struggle to overcome the anxiety he faced in wearing his special suit when he jumped from the stratosphere to Earth from a helium balloon on 14 October 2012.
• The New York City hotel, "The Casablanca" that successfully used a tactic of "sparkling sunshine" to combat bad reviews online.
Some more of what is covered here includes:
• Relationships; love.
• Parenting; the "good enough" parent.
• Constructive criticism; the faults of the traditional "shit sandwich" method.
• Carrot and stick approaches to evangelizing.
• Rewards and punishments.
• The achievement gap between students; IQ, the failed school systems.
• Social acceptance; the role of gossip in social cohesion.
*********************
As mentioned at the start of this review; the book was excellent.
I liked the writing even more the second time around. If social psychology is an interest of yours, then this one needs to be on your shelf.
5 stars, and a spot on my favorites shelf.
I decided to read this one a second time, and so I thought I'd update my review. The book has some excellent writing, and was a very well put together work, in general.
The potential reader of this book can safely disregard the top review here. Ironically enough - the authors mention his specific kind of review in their book, with hilarious effect. Too bad that irony will be lost on him...
Author Roy F. Baumeister is a social psychologist who is known for his work on the self, social rejection, belongingness, sexuality and sex differences, self-control, self-esteem, self-defeating behaviors, motivation, aggression, consciousness, and free will.
Roy F. Baumeister:
The book hits the ground running, with a formidable prologue. The authors open the book with the quote at the start of this review. Since I'm not sure which of the two credited authors wrote what, I'll just refer to them as "the authors" in this review; for simplicity's sake.
The authors did a great job with this one. The book is written in easy, accessible prose that should have no trouble holding the attention of even the scientifically illiterate layperson. Points awarded here, as this seems to be a rather rare talent that eludes many authors. The book contains many super-interesting bits of writing, and is peppered with many humorous asides throughout.
The negativity bias is incredibly interesting. An evolutionary mechanism; the authors note that an organism that does not place a premium on negative information is unlikely to enjoy evolutionary fitness. Our brains are wired to consider both positive and negative inputs, but the negative bypasses our prefrontal cortex, where most of our higher-ordered thinking takes place and is sent directly to the amygdala, where it can be acted on in an incredibly fast manner.
Baumeister has distilled the negativity bias down to a simple maxim, which can be expressed as a rough 4:1 rule. That is; there needs to be roughly 4 "good" things to happen, to offset 1 "bad" thing. This shows up in psychology over and over - from relationships, to business dealing, to many other aspects of life.
The authors also go over the "carrot and stick" systems of operant conditioning. In today's climate, "stick" approaches are widely rebuked, in favour of nicer "carrot" approaches. Unfortunately, however; the various "carrot" approaches are not as effective as different "stick" approaches - given the evolutionary import of the negativity bias.
The book also covers mob mentality, moral panics, and many other related topics of the bias towards negativity.
Also discussed here are some tangentially related anecdotal stories that were really interesting, among them:
• Felix Baumgartner's struggle to overcome the anxiety he faced in wearing his special suit when he jumped from the stratosphere to Earth from a helium balloon on 14 October 2012.
• The New York City hotel, "The Casablanca" that successfully used a tactic of "sparkling sunshine" to combat bad reviews online.
Some more of what is covered here includes:
• Relationships; love.
• Parenting; the "good enough" parent.
• Constructive criticism; the faults of the traditional "shit sandwich" method.
• Carrot and stick approaches to evangelizing.
• Rewards and punishments.
• The achievement gap between students; IQ, the failed school systems.
• Social acceptance; the role of gossip in social cohesion.
*********************
As mentioned at the start of this review; the book was excellent.
I liked the writing even more the second time around. If social psychology is an interest of yours, then this one needs to be on your shelf.
5 stars, and a spot on my favorites shelf.
February 8, 2020
Shares some interesting and useful work on psychology which helps augment what I knew from cognitive behavioral therapy. Low rating for the chapters which uncritically relied on Chicago School work and Heritage Foundation scholarship and left me unable to trust much of the rest. While Tierney does a good job in debunking some other single-cause bogeymen for things like bad grades, he then turns right around and accepts the idea that the problem with schools is we want to be too nice to students instead of looking at how the problems he describes are combined with systemic defunding, racism, etc. He doesn't even seem to notice how the racial achievement gap between students coincides with the 90s shift in policing/jails after the crime bill and how the upping of the war on drugs affected home lives and families, as well as schools and systems.
That's just one example. Also cites Pinker. Yikes. Am I being a classic example of the mean reviewer trying to sound smart? Maybe, but it's also a DNF for me and I wanted to spell out why this book, which has some promising aspects, is also dangerously simplistic and single solution-ey just like some of the ideas he debunks.
Some highlights: excellent correction of the misuse of the "bad apple" term, some interesting stuff on online reviews (yes, the irony is not lost on me) and how people can respond, and the power of bad in relationships is worth chewing on.
If you find the subject interesting, I would say it's a pretty easy read and you can jump around to focus on areas that interest you -- but keep quite a few grains of salt on hand and think of it as another tool in your mental health box which may come in handy.
Edited to add a quote from another reviewer which captures the heart of things for me:
"Facebook is NOT better than i fear it is, primarily full of happy memories. Or maybe, to use the authors’ illustration, it only takes a few genocidaire bad apples to spoil the whole barrel of grandchildren’s birthdays."
When tools like Facebook are used to promote hatred of immigrants or things like the Rohingya Genocide, it is actually a pretty big deal with lasting damage.
That's just one example. Also cites Pinker. Yikes. Am I being a classic example of the mean reviewer trying to sound smart? Maybe, but it's also a DNF for me and I wanted to spell out why this book, which has some promising aspects, is also dangerously simplistic and single solution-ey just like some of the ideas he debunks.
Some highlights: excellent correction of the misuse of the "bad apple" term, some interesting stuff on online reviews (yes, the irony is not lost on me) and how people can respond, and the power of bad in relationships is worth chewing on.
If you find the subject interesting, I would say it's a pretty easy read and you can jump around to focus on areas that interest you -- but keep quite a few grains of salt on hand and think of it as another tool in your mental health box which may come in handy.
Edited to add a quote from another reviewer which captures the heart of things for me:
"Facebook is NOT better than i fear it is, primarily full of happy memories. Or maybe, to use the authors’ illustration, it only takes a few genocidaire bad apples to spoil the whole barrel of grandchildren’s birthdays."
When tools like Facebook are used to promote hatred of immigrants or things like the Rohingya Genocide, it is actually a pretty big deal with lasting damage.
March 17, 2022
I’ve loved the work of Roy Baumeister for a while, so I’ve been anticipating this book and it didn’t disappoint.
I’ve always been fascinated with the problem we all face of negativity bias. This book does a great job explaining it in all aspects of our lives from relationships, to consuming news, to giving criticism and much more.
Best of all, the authors prevent excellent solutions.
2nd read:
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how angry the world is and why we can’t stop clicking on headlines that fuel our anger even further. So, I decided to re-read this book from John Tierney and Roy Baumeister. Baumeister is one of my favorite psychological researchers and writers, and this book is fantastic. Baumeister and Tierney start the book by explaining how and why we evolved to have a negativity bias as well as it’s pros and cons in the modern age. From there, they break down a variety of different topics such as why we suck in relationships and what we can do better as well as how we make terrible business and everyday decisions due to this bias. They provide a ton of tips for how to counter the negativity bias, and I love how they ended the book with a ton of social issues that were completely messed up due to this bias. It’s extremely enlightening.
If you haven’t read this book yet, you need to. It’ll help you make a lot more sense of the world as well as your own personal life and decisions.
I’ve always been fascinated with the problem we all face of negativity bias. This book does a great job explaining it in all aspects of our lives from relationships, to consuming news, to giving criticism and much more.
Best of all, the authors prevent excellent solutions.
2nd read:
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how angry the world is and why we can’t stop clicking on headlines that fuel our anger even further. So, I decided to re-read this book from John Tierney and Roy Baumeister. Baumeister is one of my favorite psychological researchers and writers, and this book is fantastic. Baumeister and Tierney start the book by explaining how and why we evolved to have a negativity bias as well as it’s pros and cons in the modern age. From there, they break down a variety of different topics such as why we suck in relationships and what we can do better as well as how we make terrible business and everyday decisions due to this bias. They provide a ton of tips for how to counter the negativity bias, and I love how they ended the book with a ton of social issues that were completely messed up due to this bias. It’s extremely enlightening.
If you haven’t read this book yet, you need to. It’ll help you make a lot more sense of the world as well as your own personal life and decisions.
January 4, 2020
Great instructive book especially for our gloom and doom times. Tierney writes with compassion and insight about the instinctive ways we veer toward the negative, and how we can consciously choose otherwise. The book could be a life-saver for all sorts of relationships, including the relationship we all have with our selves.
February 2, 2020
This book serves as a cross between a synopsis of long held psychological observations and a mix of some techno-optimist reflections pulled from folks like Steven Pinker: that negative, or “bad”, thoughts can be overwhelming and that in actuality the world is a much better place that we think it to be. A good number of examples are given in the first few sections to back up this thesis. Fair enough. It reads for the most part like a book that a corporate manager would hand out to their underlings to read and absorb as there are some tidbits about how being positive can serve one well in business sectors such as the service industry. It’s all pretty innocuous until it goes off the rails at the end and there’s a longish section about how the concern over nicotine addiction has been totally overblown – it’s just that pesky ‘negative’ thinking and that the harms of smoking are all in the tar. Wait, what?!? And then there’s the doubling down on the twisted observation made on GMO’s: while GMO’s might not be as harmful as their fiercest opponents make them out to be, the unthoughtful brushing asides of all concerns comes across as really petty in its expression here. And finally putting Georg Gilder on a pedestal is just wrong: most of his overrated predictions turned out to be bunk. Thankfully it’s not overlong.
June 1, 2021
A lot of good stuff in the book, but I tired of the writing style, sort of punchy-rollicking-journalism rather than a more thoughtful science writing that I prefer. The dumb title and garish front cover gave me a “bad” impression to start with, but as I read the book I ended up liking it more as I went along.
One part I really had a problem with, though, was a long highly approving section about a chain of charter schools in NY:
“The Success Academy schools are publicly funded and open to anyone, with acceptance determined by lottery, so they’re educating a representative sample of the students in their neighborhoods.”
Well, this bit is plainly false, about them having a “representative” sample of kids. Number 1, only certain types of parents bother to enter a charter school lottery, and number two, the schools demand a huge time/energy commitment from the parents as well as the students, so this affects who chooses to go and who continues to go. Clearly they end up with a non-representative sample of students, so a portion of their ‘success’ (graduation rates, college admissions) has to do with what students they accept and retain, compared to the local public schools.
Anyway, I liked a lot of the book, but not the style so much.
One part I really had a problem with, though, was a long highly approving section about a chain of charter schools in NY:
“The Success Academy schools are publicly funded and open to anyone, with acceptance determined by lottery, so they’re educating a representative sample of the students in their neighborhoods.”
Well, this bit is plainly false, about them having a “representative” sample of kids. Number 1, only certain types of parents bother to enter a charter school lottery, and number two, the schools demand a huge time/energy commitment from the parents as well as the students, so this affects who chooses to go and who continues to go. Clearly they end up with a non-representative sample of students, so a portion of their ‘success’ (graduation rates, college admissions) has to do with what students they accept and retain, compared to the local public schools.
Anyway, I liked a lot of the book, but not the style so much.
February 11, 2022
3 Stars
3rd Book of 2022
I don't have too much to say about this one, other than that it was the better of the two books I've had to read for work. I did find some sections of this interesting, but ultimately the last few chapters lost me. The tone seemed to shift, and the arguments were much less convincing. Ultimately, though, this book was a good reminder of how despite the short-term power of "bad," "good" will win in the end.
3rd Book of 2022
I don't have too much to say about this one, other than that it was the better of the two books I've had to read for work. I did find some sections of this interesting, but ultimately the last few chapters lost me. The tone seemed to shift, and the arguments were much less convincing. Ultimately, though, this book was a good reminder of how despite the short-term power of "bad," "good" will win in the end.
April 13, 2020
By recognizing the negativity effect and overriding our innate responses, we can break destructive patterns, think more effectively about the future, and exploit the remarkable benefits of this bias. Bad luck, bad news, and bad feelings create powerful incentives—the most powerful, in fact—to make us stronger, smarter, and kinder. Bad can be put to perfectly good uses, but only if the rational brain understands its irrational impact. Beating bad, especially in a digital world that magnifies its power, takes wisdom and effort.
Nu va, pagaliau atsirado knyga, kuriai nekyla ranka duoti 4-5 žvaigždutes. :D
Apie šią knygą išgirdau klausydama interviu su vienu iš jos autorių - Roy Baumeister. Suintrigavo mano asmenines patirtis ir pamintijimus atspindinti kertinė knygos idėja, kad blogi įspūdžiai stipriau mus veikia - įdomu, kodėl taip yra, kur tai pasireiškia ir kaip būtų galima pergudrauti šitą, kaip autoriai vadina, "negativity bias".
"There is no opposite of trauma, because no single good event has such a lasting impact. You can consciously recall happy moments from your past, but the ones that suddenly pop into your head uninvited—the involuntary memories, as psychologists call them—tend to be unhappy."
Knygos įžanga tikrai užhaipino, kad čia bus kažkas wow wow wow, tuoj čia mums parodys, kame blogio šaknys. Labai gera įžanga, rekomenduoju. Ties ja knyga galėjo ir pasibaigti, nes viskas kaip ir buvo pasakyta.
Bet tada prasidėjo bandymas sustiprinti savo pagrindines prielaidas "moksliniais įrodymais" ir gyvenimiškais pavyzdžiais. Ir prasidėjo mano nervinimasis.
Iškart pasakysiu, kad yra tikrai įžvalgių paaiškinimų - pvz., kodėl mums evoliuciškai svarbi stipresnė reakcija į negatyvius stimulus; kas vyksta su paniką sėjančia ir kurstančia medija; kaip veikia terorizmas.
Yra gerų, iliustratyvių pavyzdžių. Netgi patarimų! Pvz., skyrius apie kritiką atrodo vertingas ir visai pritaikytinas. Ironiška, bet po šitos savo miniliaupsės pereisiu prie kritikos - klasikinis "kritikos sumuštinio" atvejis, nors jį autoriai stipriai sukritikavo. Ir tai kritikai aš pritariu.
Nu bet dzin, taip jau gavosi sudėlioti. Man labiausiai kliuvo toks, sakykim, liberalus žongliravimas moksliniais tyrimais ir vienpusėmis jų interpretacijomis. Čia yra socialinės psichologijos Achilo kulnas, ir kai Baumeisteris tame interviu, po kurio ir pasiėmiau knygą, apie replikacijos krizę atsiliepė maždaug "ai, dabar madinga save iškelti per kitų žlugdymą, nereikia rimtai žiūrėti į tuos bandymus replikuoti senus tyrimus, nes jie nevykėliški" (tikrai netiksli citata, bet interviu čia: https://scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast...), man reikėjo tai priimti kaip redflag'ą.
Kai socialiniai psichologai išvadas apie žmones, socialines būtybes, daro besiremdami laboratoriniais, natūralių socialinių aplinkybių neatspindindčiais miniatiūrinių imčių eksperimentais, tai yra labai, labai netikslu ir nepatikima. Suprantu, kad norima būti "rimtu mokslu", bet ne visos gamtos mokslų priemonės čia tinka.*
Bet čia tokių tyrimų daugybė pricituota ir nepasikuklinta su jų interpretacijomis. Tiek norint kažkokį teiginį pagrįsti, tiek teikiant rekomendacijas, kaip elgtis versle ar santykiuose. Maždaug, kadangi santuokos rečiau iširo, kai jų partneriai idealizavo vienas kitą, jei norit neišsiskirti, idealizuokit vienas kitą. Eee, o kaip dėl mantros "koreliacija nereiškia priežastingumo"? Gal porose partneriai idealizuoja vienas kitą, nes... myli vienas kitą? Ir tada rečiau skiriasi? Nes myli? Negali taip būti? Ar idealizavimas sukels meilę? Nesakau, kad taip yra, bet šokinėjimas prie patarimų remiantis maždaug tokiais tyrimais ne ką tikslesnis nei būrimas iš kavos tirščių. Vargu, ar tas patarimas pakenks patiems santykiams, bet psichologijos kaip mokslo įvaizdžiui - laisvai.
Dar apie tas muštruojančias, į rezultatą orientuotas mokyklas, kuriose besimokančių moksleivių rezultatai daug geresni nei tų, kurie mokosi paprastose mokyklose. Labai įdomios mintys apie tai, kad vaikiukų savivertės saugojimas ilgalaikėj perspektyvoj nėra konstruktyvus nei tai pačiai savivertei, nei mokymosi rezultatams. Bet kaip mane užknisa, kai mokyklų "efektyvumas" matuojamas tik pagal mokymosi rezultatus. O kaip socialiniai įgūdžiai, emocinė būklė, pasitenkinimas gyvenimu? Nea, svarbu, kad į bausmę orientuotose mokyklose disciplinuoti vaikai paskui gerai egzaminus išlaiko.
Ir dar jei būtų galima iškęsti tuos verslo psichologijos intarpus ir vemti verčiančius pavyzdžius apie super pozityvius viešbučius, kurių darbuotojai gatavi tave aptriesti pozityvumu ir small-talk'ais, mane nokautavo tas verkšlenantis pozityviosios psichologijos promotinimas. Ojojoi, psichologai orientuojasi tik į visokius blogus dalykus, o kaip visi geriii? Kaip pozityvas? Kodėl jo niekas netyrinėėėja? Ta prasme, šitas nusistebėjimas paseno gal prieš kokį 10 metų. Dabar viskas sukasi apie laimę ir pozityvą. Pozityvioji psichologija lenda visur - kad ir į onkopsichologiją, savo metaanalizėmis bandydama visus įtikinti, kad optimizmas gali išgydyti... somatines ligas. Man norėtųsi klausti ne kodėl pozityvioji psichologija "nemadinga", o kada ji pagaliau išeis iš mados.
O tai, kad buvo ir tebėta atliekama daug visokių "blogybių" kaip traumos ar depresija, tyrimų, kaip tik turėtų džiuginti autorius, kurių vienas stipriausių teiginių - daug svarbiau ne pozityvūs jausmiukai/elgesiukai, o negatyviųjų nebuvimas.
Be a good-enough husband, a good-enough wife, a good-enough friend or neighbor, a good-enough teacher or boss. Focus not on achieving perfection but rather on avoiding elementary mistakes, both in your behavior and in the way you interpret others’ behavior.
Tai jeigu tyrinėjama, kaip tuos negatyvius dalykus sumažinti ar iš kur jie atsiranda, viskas čia į tuos pačius vartus.
Nu aš ir pikta. Bet net ir pripažindama negatyvo galią, negaliu virškinti ant empirinių snarglių kabančių pozityviosios psichologijos klišių. Tikėjausi kažko rimtesnio. Užtat greitai perskaičiau.
*Ne tik aš taip galvoju. Žr.:
Rozin, P. (2001). Social Psychology and Science: Some lessons from Solomon Asch. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(1), 2–14. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327957PSPR...
Yarkoni, T. (2019). The generalizability crisis.
April 20, 2020
I kind of wanted to rate this book 3 1/2 stars but decided not to let the negativity bias dictate the score, so it got a 4. I liked a lot of the information in this book. It helps me to understand relationships better and encourages me to fight negativity in my own life. However, at the end I thought he sounded a little crazy, and I believe in good journalism and people who fight causes that need to be fought. I thought he dismissed too many important fights as people overreacting to the bad. Bringing the bad to the conscious of the public may bring negative effects, but I think we should learn on our own how to filter the source and not dismiss things simply because they are crises.
March 5, 2020
I absolutely loved this book! This gave some pretty good tips to be positive for negative situations and explain all of the forms of the negativity effect. I recommend this book to anyone who's struggling because of it like me. :)
July 27, 2021
John Tierney is one of a few social policy analysts that is almost consistently worth reading. In this book he explores why negativity rules us. It comes down to one principle we remember the bad more prominently than the good. He argues that to achieve balance one needs four good events to overcome on bad one. He reviews the literature in this area and then offers some suggestions about how to deal with the problem. It turns out to start with what he calls the "negative golden rule" - “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself”
But the book also explores something that HL Mencken once argued "“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. Catastrophe cannot be avoided without the help of the experts”. He argues that the combination of "pundits , both political and ideological; politicians and the main stream media (IF it bleeds it leads) have helped to put us into thinking about crises constantly.
But there is hope. He starts with George Gilder's Thesis in Life After Television (which was written in the mid-1980s and like a lot of his other writing was prophetic) where Gilder argued that the days of the MSM were closing. Proliferation of sources would bring about positive trends. He also goes back to Charles McKay's classic - The Madness of Crowds. Which in the middle of the 1800s analyzed public mania. Tierney decries the crisis of crisis. But he does not despair. At the end of the book he describes some trends which are well hidden but pronounced. If you look at the vast majority of social media posts they deal with positive things - but the crisis mongers try to hook us on the negative. American's political views, if you separate out the crisis class in all stripes, is both pretty moderate and subject to pretty quick change when new facts become available. He suggests that we all spend less time with cable news and more time in developing all those sorts of independent opinions. Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
But the book also explores something that HL Mencken once argued "“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. Catastrophe cannot be avoided without the help of the experts”. He argues that the combination of "pundits , both political and ideological; politicians and the main stream media (IF it bleeds it leads) have helped to put us into thinking about crises constantly.
But there is hope. He starts with George Gilder's Thesis in Life After Television (which was written in the mid-1980s and like a lot of his other writing was prophetic) where Gilder argued that the days of the MSM were closing. Proliferation of sources would bring about positive trends. He also goes back to Charles McKay's classic - The Madness of Crowds. Which in the middle of the 1800s analyzed public mania. Tierney decries the crisis of crisis. But he does not despair. At the end of the book he describes some trends which are well hidden but pronounced. If you look at the vast majority of social media posts they deal with positive things - but the crisis mongers try to hook us on the negative. American's political views, if you separate out the crisis class in all stripes, is both pretty moderate and subject to pretty quick change when new facts become available. He suggests that we all spend less time with cable news and more time in developing all those sorts of independent opinions. Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
October 13, 2023
4.5 ⭐
"To survive, life has to win every day. Death has to win just once."
The book started amazing with insights on the human biases, based on very interesting experiments. Unfortunately, the last few chapters felt less interesting with less innovative info, but overall It kinda changed my life practically and strengthened my belief that despite everything - good DOES prevail in the end.
"To survive, life has to win every day. Death has to win just once."
The book started amazing with insights on the human biases, based on very interesting experiments. Unfortunately, the last few chapters felt less interesting with less innovative info, but overall It kinda changed my life practically and strengthened my belief that despite everything - good DOES prevail in the end.
April 9, 2021
Welchen Effekt hat das "Schlechte" auf uns! Ist es wirklich immer besser zu belohnen statt zu bestrafen? John Tierney untersucht die Studien von Baumeister und kommt auf erstaunliche Erkenntnisse, die uns bei der Gestaltung von zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen behilflich sein können. Beispielsweise die "Positivitäts-ratio", die besagt, dass 4 positive Dinge 1 negative Sache neutralisieren. Und je geringer diese Ration ausfällt, desto ungesünder ist die Beziehung.
Spannende Inhalte!
Spannende Inhalte!
March 6, 2023
Not a lot of novelty if you're familiar w/ the research and debate on moral panics. But cool read nonetheless. And I learned a lot about positivity ratios and the "No Excuses" schools.
April 20, 2021
A very American book. In other countries one can choose quality news that are not as detrimental like e.g. Fox news in the US and the Sun in the UK. Also in the US, the NY times has higher quality. If we read those, we support quality news and don't get manipulated. Win-Win ... Where is this advice in the book?
While I certainly enjoyed the book, read it cover to cover, don't regret it and will look up a few things again as the book does contain interesting and useful content, I often found that the book seemed quickly written and some arguments and solutions not well thought through, full with bias and misunderstandings/misinterpretations of the valid study results, oftentimes recommending to not trust oneself when there are many options to improve the gut feeling besides the techniques Baumeister recommends.
There are plenty of studies mentioned where women and men behave differently (especially heterosexual ones, interestingly). Also the reference to genetics and evolution as an explanation is sexist and short-sighted and, so, I do agree with other reviewers that the book has to be read with care. While the book is about the negativity bias, Baumeister has quite a few biases himself and seems to not be interested in supporting women and acknowledging socialisation as the main cause for the differences.
While there is some truth in chapter 9, some of the arguments read like Baumeister and Tierney are members of the lobby of the pharmaceutical industry. The whole book is like that. A few good pointers, even a few good solutions, but dilluted by a lot of stupid solutions (reasonably good ideas are not properly distilled from shortsightedness) and misinterpretations of studies. The authors make the same mistakes as those they try to dismantle: using the same (small) hammer for differently sized nails ... while screaming to have found the solution.
Also, I would have preferred the book to be written by Baumeister himself as that may have involved him more and may have made the book better thought through. But it may well be that it would NOT have been better if he'd have written it all by himself given his other books in which he already displayed strong sexism and a tendency to explain everything with genetics and evolution.
While I certainly enjoyed the book, read it cover to cover, don't regret it and will look up a few things again as the book does contain interesting and useful content, I often found that the book seemed quickly written and some arguments and solutions not well thought through, full with bias and misunderstandings/misinterpretations of the valid study results, oftentimes recommending to not trust oneself when there are many options to improve the gut feeling besides the techniques Baumeister recommends.
There are plenty of studies mentioned where women and men behave differently (especially heterosexual ones, interestingly). Also the reference to genetics and evolution as an explanation is sexist and short-sighted and, so, I do agree with other reviewers that the book has to be read with care. While the book is about the negativity bias, Baumeister has quite a few biases himself and seems to not be interested in supporting women and acknowledging socialisation as the main cause for the differences.
While there is some truth in chapter 9, some of the arguments read like Baumeister and Tierney are members of the lobby of the pharmaceutical industry. The whole book is like that. A few good pointers, even a few good solutions, but dilluted by a lot of stupid solutions (reasonably good ideas are not properly distilled from shortsightedness) and misinterpretations of studies. The authors make the same mistakes as those they try to dismantle: using the same (small) hammer for differently sized nails ... while screaming to have found the solution.
Also, I would have preferred the book to be written by Baumeister himself as that may have involved him more and may have made the book better thought through. But it may well be that it would NOT have been better if he'd have written it all by himself given his other books in which he already displayed strong sexism and a tendency to explain everything with genetics and evolution.
January 9, 2020
Nice throughly research book. Has good bits of info that made me think about how I go about my own life.
February 20, 2021
I wanted to stop reading after the introduction, but I trudged through this unremarkable work to at least see where it was going. It's funny reviewing a book that contains a chapter analyzing the nature of reviews such as this. My review wasn't going to be this negative until chapter 9 (Crisis Crisis).
I'm a geographer and environmental scientist. I study places and people. Baumeister (and his mouthpiece Tierney) are presenting a heavily biased theory presented through a lens of utmost privilege. Through the eyes of a white-male American, it's easy to say we focus way more on the bad than the good and there's no reason why shouldn't be enjoying life more. I'm focusing on the fallacy presented in chapter 9 here because it brings their bias to the forefront. They talk about how few people are experiencing famine poverty compared to decades ago. Absolute values of poverty mean little to the billions of people in relative poverty. I would encourage everyone to read $2.00 A Day by H. Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin to see how many people in the U.S. alone don't have access to healthy food. To flaunt their ignorance further, Tierney and Baumeister state the biggest dietary challenge is now obesity, not understanding that obesity is often a result of inadequate diet of the poor.
Absolute poverty means nothing in the grand scheme of wellbeing. It is a value presented by do-gooders in places far away from the most impoverished areas. I would also encourage everyone to read Planet of Slums by Mike Davis. Davis paints a truly vivid picture of what it's like to live in absolute poverty. Tierney even mentions in chapter 9 Nigeria by name. I'd love to see them tell a slum dweller in Lagos who shares a single bathroom with 100 other people and climbs over discarded fetuses and fecal matter to go to sleep that they have more to be happy with.
The ultimate insult is to completely ignore climate change in that chapter because it happens to invalidate their argument that their is a crisis of crises. Their argument of "things are never as bad as they seem" has allowed climate change action to remain stalled for 30 years. But this is a professor of psychology from the U.S. and now Australia: extractors 1 & 2. Both of these 67 year olds will be dead by 2050, when a poor child from a southern country stands wading through shit and piss as the ocean floods their shanty.
Before panning me as pessimist, I want to say I am optimistic. I am hopeful. I am hopeful that old white men like these will stop presenting their panacea as poor people of color are left to rot and waste away in the collateral of Tierney's and Baumeister's privileged lifestyle. We're not going to defeat climate change by succumbing to negativity, that's right. But this bullshit certainly isn't going to help.
I'm a geographer and environmental scientist. I study places and people. Baumeister (and his mouthpiece Tierney) are presenting a heavily biased theory presented through a lens of utmost privilege. Through the eyes of a white-male American, it's easy to say we focus way more on the bad than the good and there's no reason why shouldn't be enjoying life more. I'm focusing on the fallacy presented in chapter 9 here because it brings their bias to the forefront. They talk about how few people are experiencing famine poverty compared to decades ago. Absolute values of poverty mean little to the billions of people in relative poverty. I would encourage everyone to read $2.00 A Day by H. Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin to see how many people in the U.S. alone don't have access to healthy food. To flaunt their ignorance further, Tierney and Baumeister state the biggest dietary challenge is now obesity, not understanding that obesity is often a result of inadequate diet of the poor.
Absolute poverty means nothing in the grand scheme of wellbeing. It is a value presented by do-gooders in places far away from the most impoverished areas. I would also encourage everyone to read Planet of Slums by Mike Davis. Davis paints a truly vivid picture of what it's like to live in absolute poverty. Tierney even mentions in chapter 9 Nigeria by name. I'd love to see them tell a slum dweller in Lagos who shares a single bathroom with 100 other people and climbs over discarded fetuses and fecal matter to go to sleep that they have more to be happy with.
The ultimate insult is to completely ignore climate change in that chapter because it happens to invalidate their argument that their is a crisis of crises. Their argument of "things are never as bad as they seem" has allowed climate change action to remain stalled for 30 years. But this is a professor of psychology from the U.S. and now Australia: extractors 1 & 2. Both of these 67 year olds will be dead by 2050, when a poor child from a southern country stands wading through shit and piss as the ocean floods their shanty.
Before panning me as pessimist, I want to say I am optimistic. I am hopeful. I am hopeful that old white men like these will stop presenting their panacea as poor people of color are left to rot and waste away in the collateral of Tierney's and Baumeister's privileged lifestyle. We're not going to defeat climate change by succumbing to negativity, that's right. But this bullshit certainly isn't going to help.
January 10, 2021
You may have heard that we pay more attention to bad news than good, but the extent to which that colors our world is pretty crazy, and makes the world crazier. The book blends research, intriguing examples, and steps we can take to avoid the traps of negativity, The Crisis Crisis, and more.
December 31, 2021
في مجموعة تجارب لا تُنسى ، عندما تم غمر صرصور معقم ميت في كوب من عصير التفاح ، ثم تمت إزالته بسرعة ، رفض معظم الناس تناول رشفة من ذلك العصير. أصبح معظمهم غير مستعدين لشرب أي عصير تفاح على الإطلاق ، ولا حتى عندما تم سكبه حديثًا من علبة جديدة في كوب نظيف. يمكن لأدنى لمسة لحشرة مثيرة للاشمئزاز أن تجعل أي طعام يبدو فجأة غير صالح للأكل.
لكن لنفترض أن أحد المجربين وضع قطعة لذيذة من كعكة الشوكولاتة فوق طبق مليء بالصراصير المعقمة. هل هذا يجعلك على استعداد لأكل الحشرات؟ هل يمكنك أن تتخيل أي طعام جيد جداً لدرجة أن مجرد ملامسته للصحن سيجعل الصراصير صالحة للأكل؟ بالطبع لا . أكدت هذه الدراسات للاشمئزاز والعدوى قول روسي قديم: "ملعقة من القطران يمكن أن تفسد برميل من العسل ، لكن ملعقة من العسل لا تفعل شيئًا لبرميل من القطران".
بينما كان المشرفون على التجربة يفكرون في هذا التباين ، وجدوا أن هذا التحيز السلبي ينطبق على مجموعة واسعة من الظواهر. في العديد من التقاليد الدينية ، يمكن أن يُلعن الشخص بانتهاك واحد أو أن يتملّكه شيطان في لحظة ، لكن الأمر يتطلب عقودًا من الأعمال الصالحة والتفاني حتى يُصبح مقدسًا. في نظام الطبقات الهندوسية ، يتلوث البراهمان عن طريق تناول طعام أعدّه شخص من الطبقة الدنيا ، لكن المنبوذ لا يصبح أكثر نقاءً عن طريق تناول طعام أعدّه براهمان.
.
Roy Baumeister
The Power Of Bad
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
لكن لنفترض أن أحد المجربين وضع قطعة لذيذة من كعكة الشوكولاتة فوق طبق مليء بالصراصير المعقمة. هل هذا يجعلك على استعداد لأكل الحشرات؟ هل يمكنك أن تتخيل أي طعام جيد جداً لدرجة أن مجرد ملامسته للصحن سيجعل الصراصير صالحة للأكل؟ بالطبع لا . أكدت هذه الدراسات للاشمئزاز والعدوى قول روسي قديم: "ملعقة من القطران يمكن أن تفسد برميل من العسل ، لكن ملعقة من العسل لا تفعل شيئًا لبرميل من القطران".
بينما كان المشرفون على التجربة يفكرون في هذا التباين ، وجدوا أن هذا التحيز السلبي ينطبق على مجموعة واسعة من الظواهر. في العديد من التقاليد الدينية ، يمكن أن يُلعن الشخص بانتهاك واحد أو أن يتملّكه شيطان في لحظة ، لكن الأمر يتطلب عقودًا من الأعمال الصالحة والتفاني حتى يُصبح مقدسًا. في نظام الطبقات الهندوسية ، يتلوث البراهمان عن طريق تناول طعام أعدّه شخص من الطبقة الدنيا ، لكن المنبوذ لا يصبح أكثر نقاءً عن طريق تناول طعام أعدّه براهمان.
.
Roy Baumeister
The Power Of Bad
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
June 22, 2022
3.5 stars for The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It by John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister.
I’m a bit of a pessimist by nature and have said more than once that I’m glad I didn’t bring kids into this world that seems to be spiraling ever farther into darkness. The Power of Bad opened my eyes though to the human brain’s negativity bias and provides strategies we can use to offset it.
The book is a bit dry, but that’s not surprising since the content is meant to be educational rather than entertaining. The authors do include some humor where appropriate. The wide range of topics and examples is probably good from a research point of view, but it was a bit overwhelming to follow throughout. A second listen to the chapters that interested me most will undoubtably help me recall strategies I can try going forward to bring more positivity into my daily life.
Readers will likely not agree with every point the authors make but may still find the content to be interesting and thought-inducing. It made this pessimist feel more hopeful, and that’s enough of a reason for me to recommend it.
I’m a bit of a pessimist by nature and have said more than once that I’m glad I didn’t bring kids into this world that seems to be spiraling ever farther into darkness. The Power of Bad opened my eyes though to the human brain’s negativity bias and provides strategies we can use to offset it.
The book is a bit dry, but that’s not surprising since the content is meant to be educational rather than entertaining. The authors do include some humor where appropriate. The wide range of topics and examples is probably good from a research point of view, but it was a bit overwhelming to follow throughout. A second listen to the chapters that interested me most will undoubtably help me recall strategies I can try going forward to bring more positivity into my daily life.
Readers will likely not agree with every point the authors make but may still find the content to be interesting and thought-inducing. It made this pessimist feel more hopeful, and that’s enough of a reason for me to recommend it.
June 1, 2022
Outstanding! This book has changed my life. I understand myself and the world better, at a deep level. I'm pretty skeptical of many of the studies cited, and that turned me off a bit the first time I read it, but they really aren't necessary to the point. I can observe the truth of it through introspection and observation of the people around me.
Bad is stronger than good. Not more powerful, but just stronger in that our brains are tuned to it. Once you accept this and understand it, there are things you can do about it to improve your life greatly. And you can understand so much more about why society is the way it is.
I've read about the negativity bias before, but the framing of this book is what makes it stand out. It's not about how irrational we humans are, but about the amazing fact that we now know ourselves well enough to conquer this ancient problem. Or, more precisely, to build new layers of software on top of the inherited tendencies that no longer serve us.
It is uplifting and heroic and a beautiful tribute to the rational animal. A very broad theme with immediate practical guidance. Highly recommend!
Bad is stronger than good. Not more powerful, but just stronger in that our brains are tuned to it. Once you accept this and understand it, there are things you can do about it to improve your life greatly. And you can understand so much more about why society is the way it is.
I've read about the negativity bias before, but the framing of this book is what makes it stand out. It's not about how irrational we humans are, but about the amazing fact that we now know ourselves well enough to conquer this ancient problem. Or, more precisely, to build new layers of software on top of the inherited tendencies that no longer serve us.
It is uplifting and heroic and a beautiful tribute to the rational animal. A very broad theme with immediate practical guidance. Highly recommend!
January 4, 2021
This book was an incredible insight on how negativity affects all aspects of our lives. Everything from relationships to the war on Vapes. It certainly made me aware of how negativity impacts my life and responses to situations.
The book was written in an easy to understand and often times fun cadence that made it read less like a self help book and more like a discussion.
The book was written in an easy to understand and often times fun cadence that made it read less like a self help book and more like a discussion.
January 23, 2020
This book was very well-researched and most of the information was pretty fascinating. The chapters on relationships, the brain's inner demon, and the Pollyanna principle were probably the most useful for readers, and as a self-help book, the main takeaway seems to be to limit your exposure to negativity and just generally be aware of the negativity bias.
Some of the middle chapters -- the ones on parenting, the workplace, and online reviews -- felt like they belonged to different books, and they seemed almost counterintuitive to the book's thesis. Tierney and Baumeister could write another book entirely on how business leaders can apply this stuff to their companies (applied to your own life, the advice is basically, "don't mess up in an interview"). But I was mostly concerned with some of the case studies they included with regards to education in minority communities. I'd take the section on parenting with a grain of salt.
Also, this book kind of straddles a fine line between "Things are not as bad as we think they are" and "Everything is totally fine!" and it's hard to know where very real issues like climate change and the rise of fascism fall here. The Crisis Crisis chapter is *sort of* about this, and it helps put things in perspective, but the takeaways from that chapter basically involve asking politicians and the entire media landscape to change, and are not very encouraging.
Some of the middle chapters -- the ones on parenting, the workplace, and online reviews -- felt like they belonged to different books, and they seemed almost counterintuitive to the book's thesis. Tierney and Baumeister could write another book entirely on how business leaders can apply this stuff to their companies (applied to your own life, the advice is basically, "don't mess up in an interview"). But I was mostly concerned with some of the case studies they included with regards to education in minority communities. I'd take the section on parenting with a grain of salt.
Also, this book kind of straddles a fine line between "Things are not as bad as we think they are" and "Everything is totally fine!" and it's hard to know where very real issues like climate change and the rise of fascism fall here. The Crisis Crisis chapter is *sort of* about this, and it helps put things in perspective, but the takeaways from that chapter basically involve asking politicians and the entire media landscape to change, and are not very encouraging.
February 13, 2020
Being a pessimist, I wanted to enjoy this book and probably find some useful strategies. The prologue was good and I enjoyed the Felix Baumgartner bit and how he handled his fears when jumping from the stratosphere, but after that it went into religion in the US and I got too bored to continue. I also knew there would be business talk, which is an instant put down for me.
Did not finish.
Did not finish.
July 6, 2021
Excellent book. Not only does the book tell us all about the negativity bias and the role 'bad' plays in our lives, but it also provides strategies on how we can use it to our advantage. Highly recommend.
January 19, 2023
This is another book that I think would help every person tremendously if they read it. It’s explains our natural negativity bias, how it impacts us, and how to override it to see reality more clearly.
The book can help us see how we misinterpret the world around us and what we can do about it. It gives example of how this effects to have all areas of life; relationships, personal finances, politics, work, business, social media/news consumption. And more importantly, how to overcome the impact to have a healthier life.
I’ve being studying this type of material for a while, and I found new, helpful tips in this well-researched material.
I’d love to see this book as part of the curriculum in all high schools and universities. We would have more people who can think clearly for themselves and not blindly following everything they hear (the madness of crowds).
The book can help us see how we misinterpret the world around us and what we can do about it. It gives example of how this effects to have all areas of life; relationships, personal finances, politics, work, business, social media/news consumption. And more importantly, how to overcome the impact to have a healthier life.
I’ve being studying this type of material for a while, and I found new, helpful tips in this well-researched material.
I’d love to see this book as part of the curriculum in all high schools and universities. We would have more people who can think clearly for themselves and not blindly following everything they hear (the madness of crowds).
January 22, 2020
This book was not what I expected, but I really liked it. I expected it to focus on why the news is so negative. It eventually did that but it did a lot more. It also gave a lot of good ideas to keep from being overwhelmed by bad news and doomsday predictions. The all day news cycle overwhelms us with bad news, but so do educators, government bureaucrats and even our friends and family. Things are much much better than people think. They just can’t fight their way through the noise and fog to see it. Too bad. Good book
March 1, 2020
I don't normally use this word in my reviews of five-star books, but The Power of Bad by John Tierney is BAD (think Michael Jackson's definition, not Webster's). Negativity is omnipresent, particularly in the realm of social media, and for good reason; we are heavily disposed to remember and react to bad feelings versus good ones, by almost a four to one margin the authors claim. The use of negativity is by no means a modern phenomena either. A very secular early America literally found religion through the fire and brimstone sermons of evangelical preachers, not through messages of positivity. Despite its potency, the authors are unable to offer a panacea for Bad aside from reducing your exposure to negativity both online and in real life. Personally I've found that compassion (in lieu of a stiff drink) is the best cure for negative people; empathy can salvage all but the worst situations while fighting fire with fire only leads to burned bridges. In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." The Power of Bad is an excellent read and while it won't eliminate negativity in your life, it will help you view it in a more constructive light.
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