Business gurus tell us to strive for “excellence” in our careers and our companies, but there’s a surer and faster way to succeed. Instead of aiming to be a superstar, instead of trying to go the extra mile, follow what we call the Negative Golden Rule: It’s what you don’t do unto others that matters most.
Avoiding mistakes is far more important than doing good. In business, as in the rest of life, our thinking is skewed by a fundamental imbalance that has only recently become clear to scientists: the negativity effect. Also known as the negativity bias, it’s the universal tendency of bad emotions and events to affect us more strongly than good ones. When a supervisor gives us a generally positive evaluation, we’re liable to obsess over the tiny bit of criticism instead of appreciating the praise. When we walk into a conference room, we immediately spot a hostile face instead of focusing on the friendly ones.
In short, bad is stronger than good. This negativity effect evolved because it helped keep our ancestors alert to deadly threats, and we can’t change the way our brain is wired. But once we understand this visceral bias, we can use our rational brain to compensate for the power of bad – and also put it to work for us.
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John Tierney is a contributing editor to City Journal, and Dr. Roy F. Baumeister is a research psychologist at the University of Queensland. This essay is adapted from their new book, “The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It,” published by Penguin Press.
This piece originally appeared in LinkedIn