The Negativity Effect

By Jim Freeman

"I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful..." - Bob Wiley, What About Bob?

In the film referred to in the above quote Mr. Wiley is using a form of affirmative self-talk to create a more positive mindset. There is a scene early in the movie that shows Bob walking down the sidewalk of a busy city repeating this mantra while another gentleman bulls past him repeating a profanity-laced mantra of a different sort. Self-Talk is one of the most commonly prescribed tools in the field of sport psychology. However I've found that reactionary and unstructured conversations with ourselves can find us saying the worst things imaginable and believing them. We routinely say things to ourselves that we would never say to anyone else and we will be quick to believe those negative statements. The Negativity Effect or Negativity Bias involves the typical human response of lending more weight to negative experiences, comments or images than to positive or neutral ones. We will be impacted more by a negative comment or assessment than a positive one. This Negativity Effect looks to be hardwired into the human brain and realizing that is the first step toward gaining a measure of control over it. Christine Porath, a professor at Georgetown has found that one toxic connection in the workplace is four to seven times more impactful than a positive one. Dr. Mike Bechtle notes that it takes three to four seconds for bad news to enter our long-term memory and 12 seconds for good news. If we are distracted during those 12 seconds the good news will never even make it into our long term memory. Dr. Barbara Frederickson, author of the book Positivity has written extensively on the serious damage that negative attitudes can have on our physical health while also documenting how overcoming the negativity bias is beneficial to health. Limiting  negativity and eventually flipping it to create positive imaging and self-talk is the generally accepted formula for progress in a wide variety of areas. Because the impact of the negative is so powerful we will first focus on limiting the negative...we'll get around to the positive down the road.

In their comprehensive book The Power of Bad John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister posit their "Rule of Four": It takes four good things to overcome one bad thing. Baumeister co-authored a journal article in 2001 titled "Bad is Stronger Than Good" which eventually led to the publication of the book he co-wrote with Tierney. Tierney and Baumeister write that "avoiding bad is far more important than doing good when you're dealing with lovers, children, friends, colleagues or anyone else. It's not what you do unto others. It's what you don't do." I'll be so bold as to suggest that list of people can include ourselves as well.

Going negative is something I've experienced myself as an athlete and a coach and observed in every single team I've ever worked with. No individual and no team is able to "stay positive" all the time. We've all seen teams fall prey to this kind of destructive thinking. The trick is to limit how long we stay in that negative zone. Scott Adams writes in his book Loserthink "The thoughts you allow into your head are the code that programs your mind and body." Avoiding spending a significant amount of time dwelling on negative thoughts gives us a chance to code programs that will be beneficial to performance instead of hindering it. 

One of my pet peeves (besides the term "pet peeve") as a coach is the athlete who taps their chest and says "My B" or "My bad" after making a mistake. I coached a volleyball player years ago who routinely did it after serving into the net or forgetting to go to the correct place on defense. I was usually tempted to yell "No bleeping $%#@ it's your B!" Fortunately I was able to refrain from succumbing to that form of temptation every time it happened. The "my B" thing is commonly done after a mistake that is obvious to all as to who is at fault. That obviousness is one aspect of the act that irritates me, another is that it's sometimes used as a casual apology of sorts. The most problematic part of it is that it doesn't really allow the athlete or the rest of the team to move forward from the error with confidence and belief. I've seen many players say it and carry that sense of failure into the next play and their teammates are affected by it. Athletes, coaches and teams don't need any help dwelling on mistakes. The real trick is to put that mistake behind us immediately and prepare for the next play. Allowing one error to turn into three or four more is how losing is done.

W. Timothy Gallwey in his enormously influential book The Inner Game of Tennis discusses the notion that each of us has two selves: Self 1 is the conscious mind, the thinker, the boss and Self 2 is the subconscious mind, the executer, the performer. Self 1 is the part of ourselves that usually needs to be brought to heel. That's the part that wants to immediately assign some kind of judgement to our actions. If a golfer hooks a drive into the woods, Self 1 will be inclined to say something along the lines of "that was an idiotic swing, get your $%&# together!" Chances are such judgements won't facilitate an improvement in performance off the next tee. In fact, it's entirely possible that the next swing out of the woods will produce another less than desirable result. Such judgmental commentary will continue to cause the golfer to tighten up even more and result in continued struggle possibly culminating in my personal go-to response of shouting obscenities and throwing clubs. Gallwey writes "....the player's muscles tighten when they need to be loose, strokes become awkward and less fluid, and negative evaluations are likely to continue with growing intensity." Stacking errors because Self 1 has turned Self 2 into its personal scapegoat can be avoided if judgment is removed from the process. Athletic movements are not moral acts...there is no "wrong" swing. There are swings that don't produce the desired result. There is a difference. 

In The Book of Five Rings the legendary sixteenth century samurai Miyamoto Musashi compares the observing eye and the perceiving eye, "Observation and perception are two separate things; the observing eye is stronger' and the perceiving eye is weaker." The observing eye is strictly concerned with reality: what is there, what we see, what is actually happening, nothing more. The perceiving eye distracts us by seeing more than what is there: fear and doubt, misperceptions, value judgements, questions of why. The observing eye focuses on what we can control, the perceiving eye gets bogged down by issues and speculations that are beyond our control. The perceiving eye presents information that we don't need and it often gives that information at a time that is less than ideal. Thinking about how many putts we missed on the last green as we begin our backswing driving off the next tee is not a winning strategy. Calming our emotions and seeing things as they really are will allow us to remove distractions and judgments from the process and give us the opportunity to succeed. Musashi is heralded for his innovative swordsmanship and an  undefeated record in 61 contests including victories in duels where he lost his sword. It seems that relying on the observing eye in a duel where one's sword has been lost would be crucial if one hoped to survive such a battle.

Trevor Moawad in his excellent book It Takes What It Takes  discusses the power of speaking negatively, "Thinking about my struggles is nowhere near as powerful as verbalizing them. When it comes out of my mouth it affects me tenfold...The choice to verbalize our negativity is a death sentence." I see athletes dealing with this kind of negativity and doubt on a regular basis. Anything I say or do as a coach is not going to be nearly as impactful as what that athlete thinks or says to herself. "My bad" is one example of this but I routinely hear gloomy commentary regarding performance and I have become quick to say that it's one thing to think it but it's an entirely different thing to say it. Statements like "I just can't pass today" or "#@$& I suck today!" are so crippling that they just cannot be said. Thus, our first goal as performers of any kind is in the words of Moawad to "stop saying stupid $%#@"...in other words stop saying anything negative out loud. Reducing the negative effect of vocalizing our judgmental thoughts will have a significant impact on our own performance and the performance of those around us. 

As an aside, the fact that what a player says to herself is much more impactful than any critique I might give as a coach doesn't mean that I can take a casual approach to what I say. I've become more and more cognizant of the massive influence my negative comments can have on a player and I'm very careful about how and when I make them. Tierney and Baumeister talk about this at length in their chapter on how to deliver bad news. People's memories kick into high gear when seeing or hearing something negative and as a result that bad news will override or wipe out any good news delivered beforehand. I try to get the bad news out of the way first and then smother it with a lot of positive commentary so the player can move forward feeling better about things.

The first step for an athlete in limiting the negative is to remove judgement and self-condemnation from the equation. Gallwey states "There is a more natural process of learning and performing waiting to be discovered. It is waiting to show what it can do when allowed to operate without interference from the conscious strivings of the judgmental self."