Blackwell Reference Online

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Negativity is the tendency of humans to pay →  selective attention to events and behaviors that could have a negative impact on themselves or their group. Selective attention to negative events by primary observers, such as journalists, may result in overly negative reports to those who were not witnesses, which may result in anger or fear (→  Fear Induction through Media Content ). Whether events, people, behaviors, or gestures – abstractly called objects – are negative or positive is easily judged by humans, as is apparent from our ability to rate almost every object on scales with a positive pole (e.g., good, beautiful, trustworthy) and a negative counter-pole (e.g., evil, ugly, untrustworthy). The semantic differential →  scale is based on this ability. Experimental research shows that humans are able to build positive and negative impressions within milliseconds, for example about whom should be distrusted or trusted ( Todorov et al. 2005 ). This suggests already that first and casual observations are important, but when someone or something could become dangerous, impressions may be updated continuously, with great weight being placed on the most recent observations. Thus, in addition to continuous “online” monitoring, a primacy effect and a recency effect are observed (→  Availability, Cognitive ). The underlying rating scales (e.g., good vs. bad, beautiful vs. ugly, ... log in or subscribe to read full text