Negativity and extremity biases in impression formation: A review of explanations.

Abstract

This article reviews the research relevant to negativity and extremity biases in impression formation and discusses that research as it relates to the major theories that explain these biases. We also describe a model for these biases that draws on principles of natural object categorization. This model explains negativity and extremity biases in terms of the perceived diagnostitity of different kinds of cues for alternative categorizations of the stimulus. The model not only accounts for existing evidence regarding negativity and extremity biases but also suggests circumstances (a) in which positivity biases should occur and (b) in which single cues might be sufficient to prompt categorizations resistant to counterevidence.Two of the more interesting findings arising from research into impression formation are the negativity bias and the extremity bias. Studies have consistently indicated that impression judgments are inordinately influenced by an actor's more negative and more extreme attributes, traits, and behaviors

Are affective events richly recollected or simply familiar? The experience and process of recognizing feelings past.

“…For example, having participants explicitly rate the valence of stimuli could differentially favor the distinctive encoding of negative photos (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989), and having participants explicitly rate arousal could differentially favor the distinctive encoding of high-and medium-arousal photos. Therefore, the next task was to determine whether recollective experience, recollection, and familiarity vary as a function of valence and arousal ratings in the same way as in Experiment 1 when participants are not asked explicitly to attend to and rate the stimuli along these dimensions.…”

Consequences of customer engagement behavior: when negative Facebook posts have positive effects

“…However, negatively valenced information has been found to be more diagnostic and influential than positively valenced information in the context of product judgments (Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006;Hamilton et al 2014;Herr et al 1991;Park and Lee 2009). These findings suggest a negativity bias in processing information, whereby negative information has a stronger impact on judgment and decision making than objectively equivalent positive information (Sen and Lerman 2007;Skowronski and Carlston 1989). The negativity bias argues that negative information is more diagnostic and useful for product evaluation, because negative product attributes are considered to be distinctive of low quality products, whereas positive product attributes are believed to be characteristic of both low and high quality products (Herr et al 1991;Willemsen et al 2011).…”

Stereotype Directionality and Attractiveness Stereotyping: Is Beauty Good or is Ugly Bad?

“…Although the stereotyping literature does not address the question of stereotype directionality, classic and more recent research in the social psychological and neuroimaging literature supports the existence of a negativity bias (e.g., Baumeister, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001;Kanouse & Hansen, 1971;Rozin & Royzman, 2001;Skowronski & Carlston, 1989), that may guide our perceptions of and expectations for medium attractive people relative to unattractive and attractive people. Although there is some variation in the way that negativity bias is defined, most agree that negativity bias is a processing asymmetry that occurs when negatively valenced stimuli elicit stronger reactions than comparatively positively valenced stimuli (e.g., Crawford & Cacioppo, 2002).…”