Ep 125: The Power of Bad

Roy F. Baumeister, PhD, bestselling author of Willpower and The Power of Bad, helps us understand our tendency to focus on the negatives and why it’s not all bad. Not winning “the best parent” awards? Turns out that’s not what matters for a successful teen.

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When teens find out their friends are hanging out without them, or they didn’t get a part in the school play, they suddenly act like it’s the end of the world! No matter how hard you try to convince them that it’s really not a big deal and that there will be other opportunities in the future, they just can’t seem to get over it. Then, even when they appear to be back to their usual self for a while,  it seems like every week something new goes wrong. They just can’t stop making mountains out of molehills!
This focus on the negative expands just past dramatic teens–you might notice it in your own experiences. Even when you have ten positive interactions with your coworkers, it’s always the one that goes badly that plays over and over in your mind when you’re trying to sleep at night. You may find yourself scrutinizing your own parenting the same way, thinking about a single mistake even when you usually knock it out of the park.
To understand our preoccupation with the unfortunate, we’re talking to Dr. Roy Baumeister, author of The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. After his research paper about the human obsession with bad events garnered a remarkable amount of citations, he decided to sit down and write a book about why people tend to think too much about the things that go wrong.
Dr. Baumeister and I dive into why negative experiences feel so much more significant than positive ones. We also talk about how to dole out bad news and criticism, and the mind’s peculiar reaction to social rejection.

Click for full show notes, exercises, and parenting scripts from this episode