In psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

, the negativity effect is the tendency of people, when evaluating the causes of the behaviors of a person they dislike, to attribute their positive behaviors to the environment and their negative behaviors to the person's inherent nature. The negativity effect is the inverse of the positivity effect

Positivity effect

In psychology and cognitive science, the positivity effect is the tendency of people, when evaluating the causes of the behaviors of a person they like or prefer, to attribute the person's inherent disposition as the cause of their positive behaviors and the situations surrounding them as the cause...

, which is found when people evaluate the causes of the behaviors of a person they like. Both effects are attributional bias

Attributional bias

In psychology, an attributional bias is a cognitive bias that affects the way we determine who or what was responsible for an event or action...

es. The negativity effect plays a role in producing the fundamental attribution error

Fundamental attribution error

In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error describes the tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors...

, a major contributor to prejudice

Prejudice

Prejudice is making a judgment or assumption about someone or something before having enough knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy, or "judging a book by its cover"...

.

It's said in politics that the negativity effect is more influential with voters than the positivity effect.

The term negativity effect also refers to the tendency of some people to assign more weight to negative information in descriptions of others. Research has shown that the negativity effect in this sense is quite common, especially with younger people; older adults, however, display less of this tendency and more of the opposite tendency (the positivity effect).

See also

• List of cognitive biases
• Social undermining
  Social undermining
  Social undermining is the opposite of social support. For example, in the context of the workplace, it refers to intentional offenses aimed at destroying another's favorable reputation, their ability to accomplish their work, or their ability to build and maintain positive relationships.-See also:...
  
  
• Trait ascription bias
  Trait ascription bias
  Trait ascription bias is the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal traits across different situations...
  
  
• Victim blaming
  Victim blaming
  Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment are held entirely or partially responsible for the transgressions committed against them. Blaming the victim has traditionally emerged especially in racist and sexist forms...