15169 |
HR 317 Bad is Stronger than Good |
Stuart Levine |
M . . . . |
3:00pm-6:00pm |
DUBOIS SEMINAR |
SSCI |
Cross-listed: Psychology A year or so ago
a photography/psychology student discovered, or at least conjectured although
not yet proven, that photographically conveying a sad or negative scene to a
viewer was somehow easier then doing so for a
cheerful landscape. Why do we more
easily recognize and register the bad and why is it more salient in our lives
than the good? The so-called negative bias that “bad is
stronger than good" has been found across a wide array of psychological
literature in both human and animal life. This demonstrated from Asch (1946) within his
work on impression formation and in more recent literature surveys [Baumeister (2001); Rozin and Royzman (2001)] This bias moreover
is consistent over a myriad of topics such as: social relations; emotions;
mood; learning and even information processing; physiological arousal; and
memory. In this seminar we examine studies across the domain of psychology and
other disciplines to show that the phenomena is sufficiently ubiquitous so as
to reflect and perhaps even explain the events sensed and perceived in our life
space. Observe how the bad dominates the daily report in the media. What does this phenomenon mean with respect
to the presence or absence of optimism and associated behavior, or for the
conduct of child rearing or the power of the variable of happiness and other
positive life circumstances? Moreover,
an effort to find non-confirming data produces a negative result. No matter the variable studied bad exists at
the center of our focus while good is relegated to the periphery. This is an upper college seminar for students
of many disciplines. Class size: 10