On the one hand, you definitely want to be realistic and stay up to date with the latest news so you know what’s happening in the world. On the other hand, if all you do is watch the news and doomscroll on social media, it’s going to impact your mental and emotional health.
You need to balance staying informed with some grounded optimism. And you need to remind yourself that, after all, human beings tend to focus more on bad events than good ones. This is known as negativity bias.
The real world is much more nuanced than what you see online. And bad news tends to get more clicks than positive news, so you see the media focus more on the former.
At the same time, you want to avoid veering into toxic positivity territory, too. Ignoring reality is unhealthy, whether you focus too much on the positives or the negatives.
As per Verywell Mind, people tend to register negative stimuli more readily, dwell on these events for longer, and remember them more vividly.
In a nutshell, this is the reason why we’re not as excited about being praised as we are devastated when we get criticized. It’s also why one bad thing happening to you can (potentially) derail an otherwise perfectly fine day.
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Negativity bias also means that we’re often more motivated to do things to avoid losing something instead of aiming to gain something.
It’s likely that our focus on negativity at the expense of positivity is the result of evolution. For our ancestors, paying attention to dangers and threats was how they protected themselves and their kin. “Those who were more attuned to danger and who paid more attention to the bad things around them were more likely to survive.”
In other words, negativity bias is your brain’s way to try to keep you safe(r).
So, when you’re exposed to a constant stream of negative content, given people’s innate tendency to focus on negativity, you might start losing hope and become cynical. But cynicism, often portrayed as ‘wisdom,’ has plenty of drawbacks.
According to Dr. Jamil Zaki, a Stanford University psychology professor and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, cynicism is the idea that people “in general are selfish, greedy, and dishonest.”
Dr. Zaki told Forbes that “if you're a cynic, you believe those things more than you want evidence about people. So in fact, many cynics, research shows, don't just feel these bleak things about people. They look for evidence to support their beliefs and dismiss evidence that doesn't support their beliefs.”
Broadly speaking, cynics tend to quickly notice someone behaving selfishly or being untrustworthy. They’ll ruminate on betrayals and slights for years. And yet, when someone behaves kindly or selflessly, they’ll try to explain it away as them having ulterior motives.
“They're looking for evidence that people are bad and ignoring evidence about human goodness,” Dr. Zaki explains.
Cynicism, overall, hurts your health, relationships, and communities. For instance, if you’ve been hurt or betrayed in the past, you might trust others less, which means that you miss out on potentially positive connections and relationships in the future.
Moreover, it can hurt you at work, too, because instead of collaborating with your colleagues, you view them as your opponents whom you need to 'defeat.'
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Overall, if you’ve been feeling overly cynical, you should review what your day-to-day routine is like. For example, if you’re constantly consuming negative online content and you’re surrounded by people with really negative attitudes, you might want to shift your habits.
“The people we interact with—online and off—can have a big impact on what we think and want,” New York-based psychotherapist and negotiation coach, Alexandra Dickinson, LMSW, MA, told Forbes.
“The media can profoundly shape our worldview, often unconsciously, from a very young age. Since we're exposed to media almost from birth, it's impossible to fully distinguish its influence from other sources like family, friends, and school, but it's clear that media plays a significant role in shaping our perceptions and beliefs.”
