Getting stuck in the negatives (and how to get unstuck) | Alison Ledgerwood | TEDxUCDavis

Summary

In this talk, a social psychologist explores how our minds tend to focus more on negative experiences than positive ones. Through experiments, she demonstrates that people are more likely to get stuck in a loss frame, finding it harder to shift their perspective from negative to positive. She suggests that actively practicing gratitude and sharing good news can help retrain our minds to see the upside of things.

Takeaways

• 🤔 The speaker is a social psychologist, interested in how humans think and how they might think better.
• 📈 The speaker noticed that failures seem to stick in her mind much longer than successes, even if another success follows shortly after.
• 🧠 The concept of 'gain frame' and 'loss frame' is introduced, showing how people's perceptions can change based on how information is presented.
• 🔄 The speaker and her colleague conducted experiments to see if people can easily switch between thinking in terms of gains and losses.
• 🏥 In one experiment, describing a surgical procedure in terms of a 70% success rate (gain frame) was more favorable than a 30% failure rate (loss frame).
• 🤔 People found it easier to switch from a gain frame to a loss frame than vice versa, indicating a tendency to get stuck in negative thinking.
• 📊 Another experiment showed that people's opinions about a governor's performance were more influenced by the framing of job losses than job gains.
• ⏱️ A third study found that it took longer for people to convert from losses to gains in a simple math problem, suggesting a cognitive bias towards negative information.
• 🌐 The speaker suggests that this tendency to focus on the negative has implications for broader issues like economic recovery and personal well-being.
• 📈 Consumer confidence often lags behind economic recovery, indicating that people's perceptions can be slow to change even when objective measures improve.
• 🌟 The speaker encourages practicing gratitude and focusing on positive events to counteract the natural bias towards negative thinking.

Q & A

What is the profession of the speaker in the video?

The speaker is a social psychologist, which means they are a professional people watcher trying to understand how humans think and how they might think better.

What is the main focus of the speaker's research?

The speaker's research focuses on understanding why failures seem to stick in our minds much longer than successes and how people's minds get stuck in negative thinking.

What is the 'half-full or half-empty' analogy referring to in the script?

The 'half-full or half-empty' analogy refers to the different ways people can perceive the same situation, either as a gain (half-full) or a loss (half-empty).

What does the speaker mean by 'gain frame' and 'loss frame'?

The 'gain frame' is when the focus is on what is gained, which tends to make people feel positive. The 'loss frame' is when the focus is on what is lost, which tends to make people feel negative.

What was the purpose of the experiment involving a new surgical procedure?

The experiment aimed to investigate whether people can shift their thinking from gains to losses or vice versa, and if one way of thinking tends to stick more in the mind.

What did the participants in the first group of the surgical procedure experiment initially think about the procedure?

The participants in the first group initially thought positively about the procedure because it was described to them as having a 70% success rate.

How did the participants' opinions change when the frame of the surgical procedure was switched?

When the frame was switched from gains to losses, the participants' opinions changed from positive to negative. However, when the frame was switched from losses to gains, the participants seemed to stick with their initial negative opinion.

What did the speaker find in the third study regarding the mental effort required to switch from losses to gains?

The speaker found that it took participants significantly longer (almost 11 seconds) to convert from losses to gains compared to converting from gains to losses (about 7 seconds), suggesting that it is mentally harder to shift from a negative to a positive perspective.

Why does the speaker suggest that changing our minds about the economy might be harder than changing the economy itself?

The speaker suggests this because consumer confidence, which reflects people's perceptions, tends to lag behind economic recovery, indicating that once a negative perception sets in, it is difficult to shift back to a positive one.

What is the speaker's advice for training our minds to see the positive side of things?

The speaker advises practicing gratitude by writing about things we are thankful for daily, sharing good news with others, and being mindful to focus on the positive aspects of our experiences.

How can we apply the findings of the research to our personal and community lives, according to the speaker?

We can apply the findings by working to see the upside in our personal lives, practicing gratitude, and sharing positive experiences. In communities, we can be aware of the negativity's tendency to stick and choose to respond positively, such as forgiving a mean comment or leaving a generous tip to counteract negativity.