Jehan Sparks studies how positive vs. negative information informs our opinions. One of the things she looks at is something called a "negativity bias" where negative events loom larger than positive events when we're forming a summary impression. We talk about the nature of good vs. bad, how the order in which we learn information matters, and how different people think about information differently.

Things we mention in the episode:

• How “good vs. bad” can be too simple (Sparks, 2020)
• The “negativity bias” (Baumeister et al., 2001; Rozin & Royzman, 2001)
• How opinions depend on the order in which you learn information (Sparks & Ledgerwood, 2017)
• Negativity bias to explain risk-taking (Pietri, Fazio, & Shook, 2013)
• The effects of age on the negativity bias (Sparks & Ledgerwood, 2018)

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