Breaking the Negativity Bias: My New Year’s Resolution to Highlight Hope and Progress

I wish my brain operated differently.

Your’s too, to be honest. If I could rewire us all, I would.

What’s wrong with our brains? Well, we have a “negativity bias.” Research has shown that humans pay more attention to negative stimuli than positive ones and that we learn from and use negative information far more than positive information. Our brains, science tells us, prioritize bad news over good.

No doubt, this had some useful evolutionary benefits as we were developing as a species. In many ways, it may still keep us out of trouble from time to time. But to be selfish for a minute: it isn’t really helpful in my line of work.

I lead an organization focused on improving the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children. Today, these children face a mounting series of daunting challenges. Most days, the news is negative. Children are caught in war and conflict, droughts, floods and storms, political and economic disruption, historic levels of displacement and migration. Each crisis magnifies the other, making the situation for so many children as dire as it has been in a long time.

Since we are wired with a bias towards negativity, all of this bad news can drown out the good news that is also happening. We have made so much progress for children over past decades and continue to do so today.

There really is a lot of good news, if we look for it.

Years ago, at another organization, I brought a prospective donor to visit programs we were running in Ecuador. These kinds of visits usually inspire people and lead to deeper involvement in our work. But this person saw only the hardships and difficulties. His negativity bias kicked in. As a result, he missed the progress that was happening and couldn’t see the future possibilities. It was too much for him. He walked away, and we never heard from him again.

That doesn’t have to happen. We can break through the negativity bias if we pay attention to progress, potential and possibility. For instance, did you know:

Not long ago, less than half of all births globally took place in the presence of trained health workers, which is critical to reducing maternal and newborn deaths. Today 86 percent of births take place under the care of skilled birth attendants. That’s real progress.

And … 

Through effective child survival programs run by UNICEF and others, deaths of children under the age of 5 dropped 60 percent since 1990. That’s millions of children alive today thanks to these programs.

And …

In the mid-1980s, more than 350,000 children died or were disabled every year by polio. UNICEF and partners have cut that down by 99.9 percent and we are on a path toward global eradication.

And … 

While malaria remains one of the three leading causes of death among young children, the long-held dream of a malaria vaccine is now a reality. UNICEF delivered over 12 million doses of these vaccines to 17 countries in Africa this past year.

Clara Magalasi is the mother of one of those children. She lives in a rural village near Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Her daughter, Grace, is one of 220,000 children in Malawi who have received the RTS,S malaria vaccine through routine immunization as part of the landmark pilot project.

"Ever since Grace was born, she has never suffered from malaria, unlike my other children who experienced a lot of malaria episodes when they were the same age as Grace,” Clara said.

That’s good news! And there is so much more of it.

What might it take to break the negativity bias? Perhaps we can rewire our brains by seeking out and focusing on what’s working—the positives—rather than being overwhelmed by what is not.

That will be one of my New Year’s resolutions—to share more of the good that is happening for children globally for my own benefit and maybe yours, too. Happy New Year!