Negative bias - biological or social?

Happy_Killbot

Psychopathy is sometimes called the cure for the modern era. Psychopaths are somewhat misunderstood in our society, but fundamentally a psychopath is someone who has no conception or has no conscious consideration for the negative. Psychopaths do not worry about the draw backs and instead focus almost entirely on the positives, sometimes to a degree that causes anti-social behavior or inconsiderate impulsive action.

This is relevant because psychopaths do not have a negative bias, they are not irrational, rather they are a little too rational. When they focus on only the positives they become unlike a typical person who would avoid risks due to negative bias, and will instead take any risks they think are in their favor. They will therefore, always play the dice game, work harder to get the raise, approach love interests without fear of rejection, never eat bad food (only mediocre or good), only see the good in the news, and ignore any and all traffic accidents.

My personal pet theory, (one I have little hard evidence for I will admit) is that when people try to eliminate negative bias and "focus on the positives" in an extreme and rather toxic sense, the way many self help gurus will suggest you should live, what they are really suggesting is that you should emulate the psychopath, because they are not so strongly affected by these types of negative thinking.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

I see your point, but I think negative/positive bias refers to something different. You are talking about the lack of acknowledgement of the negative, while I implied an emotional detachment from it. That is, when you employ positive bias, you still acknowledge the negatives, dangers and so on, but they no longer define how you feel and what you do. You acknowledge them, take them into consideration and move on, enjoying the positives in the meantime.

Suppose you want to ask your boss for a raise. You obviously want to acknowledge the risks: if you do not and just, say, walk into your boss'es office every day and ask for a raise, then you will likely get fired soon, getting on his/her nerves. However, negative bias not only allows you to acknowledge those risks, but also hits you hard emotionally with them, making it extremely hard for you to actually take action. In this particular case you might be afraid that your boss will disapprove of your request, and even though the actual negative consequences of such a disapproval are very unlikely to be significant, their theoretical possibility still holds you back.
While if you have a positive bias, then you could think like this: "I want to ask my boss for a raise. I have a good case to make, and my boss is reasonable, so he should take my request seriously. Let's do it!" You do realise that you might get a rejection, but you focus on the possibility of the positive outcome, and it empowers you to take action.

Obviously there is an extreme to this as well, when, for example, you decide to jump off the bridge, thinking, "I will likely die, but there is a possibility that I will survive. It looks like a fun thing to do, so let's do it!" You definitely do not want to be careless, but you do want to be brave and decisive.

Back when I did boxing, my trainer used a very catchy phrase that can be roughly translated to English as follows: "You must be relaxed and collected, not relaxed and sloppy". In boxing, it is very important to keep your body relaxed at most points in time, which gives your movements a lot of flexibility, conserves your energy and makes your punches "snappy" - however, while relaxed, you still must be fully in control of your body. If you relax and just get lazy, then a more focused opponent will take advantage of that.
It is the same here, I feel: you should not be "obliviously positive" where you only consider positives and make a lot of mistakes, but you should be "informedly positive" where you keep negatives in mind and adjust your actions accordingly, while letting the positives guide you. Negatives define the rules of the road you are driving on, and positives tell you where on this road you should go.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar Psychopaths are aware of the negatives and pitfalls, they will not work harder than they have to if they want to achieve a goal. It isn't that they are unaware of the risks so much as they just don't care.

A psychopath would not hesitate to ask his boss for a raise, but if he doesn't think that it will work or he sees that he is getting on his boss's nerves he isn't going to try that way, instead he might go out of his way to show that he deserves the raise before asking again. The way a psychopath solves a problem is completely goal oriented. They want X so do Y and Z, who cares about the fallout.

It's hard to explain where I am coming from with this because I am not a psychologist, but every book I have read on this subject seems to indicate something like that, and even seems to indicate that the cure for negative bias is to be born a psychopath.