Cognitive Biases - The Positivity Effect

Let’s build on the topic started last week of our negativity bias. This is “the notion that, even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature have a greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than neutral or positive things.” The positivity effect is literally the opposite of the negativity bias and posits that “older adults favour positive over negative information in their memories.” In other words, in the present, the negativity bias requires that we pay attention to current threats, but when we think about our past, we are inclined to preferentially favour positive memories. 

I went down a fascinating side rat hold on this one because this is all predicated on something called socioemotional selectivity theory. Block a few hours with that one, because it includes some of my favourites ideas about how we can stretch time through experience and how as we age, we move away from long-term goals and focus more sharply on immediate gratification. I almost completely lost the plot on today’s topic when I read this quote: 

When people perceive their future as open ended, they tend to focus on future-oriented and development- or knowledge-related goals, but when they feel that time is running out and the opportunity to reap rewards from future-oriented goals' realization is dwindling, their focus tends to shift towards present-oriented and emotion- or pleasure-related goals.

Just sit with that idea for a minute. We tend to think of the young as living more in the moment, nihilistic, all about self-gratification and immediate wants. However, #science says exactly the opposite. As we age we become more and more inclined to focus on the present and our own pleasure and less about the long term outcomes.

But let’s return to the positivity bias. Since the short pithy description is “we look at past actions through rose-coloured glasses,” I can see an immediate relationship to change processes within organisations. Long term employees and leaders are going to look at past behaviours and processes and preferentially view them in a positive light. This feels familiar. I’ve referred to these folks as ‘institutionalised.’ If you’ve been with an organisation long enough, you see the past as the good old days. You forget the problems with old systems, old ways of work, old processes… or at least you diminish the negative aspects in your memory of your experience. So what we’ve got is a preference to think positively about the old, because this is literally what our brains throw up for us to remember. We combine it with a preference to think negatively about the new because we need to care about future threats. And >boom< change resistance makes a whole lot more sense.

Now interestingly, the science here is really bullish that this positivity bias is a process of aging. “Many studies now suggest that older adults attend to and remember positive information better than negative information.” As we get older, we may still experience the negativity bias in the moment, but we apparently write more positive experiences into memory than negative ones. I have this strong impulse to credit this finding with why it feels like so many in leadership positions just don’t seem to get it when the younger folks tell them, “This won’t work!” Young people are still deep in their negativity space, not just seeing the threats but writing them into memory. While older adults are all, yeah nah… it’s all good kid. Trust me the wiser older person.

At minimum, this positivity bias is going to be a factor when we think of generational responses to a change within any group. If the past is viewed more favourably, there is a far less compelling motivation to change from the status quo. If the potential benefit is either unknown and/or not easily calculated, there is even less reason for an older person to move forward. Finally, if the benefit is perceived as very far in the future -- a truly long-term play -- the positivity effect suggests that our older cohorts are going to be biased to ignore or reject it while our younger ones more likely to look upon it favourably.

Counter-acting the positivity effect in any project change process requires a very specific, narrowly targeted change approach, in my opinion. I can’t offer any easy-to-digest, quick to implement advice. As a change lead, you need to be aware it exists and how it might influence the behaviour of your stakeholder community. Each intervention is going to have to look at the target group, the specific change, and a comms and engagement strategy that nudges them to both pull off the rose-coloured glasses and pick up a bit of long-term, wholistic thinking. 

Honestly, I think we’d be better off thinking about this one at the macro, organisational culture level. What you need to do is wrap your arms around ‘life long learning’ and figure out how to embed that into your culture. Create an environment where even your older cohort is willing, able, and -- most crucially -- desirous of picking up and trying new things, even if the possible benefit is way way in the future.

“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”  ~ Beryl Markham

Wikipedia - Socioemotional selectivity theory
Stanforce Life-span Development Laboratory - Positivity effect 
Science Direct - Positivity Effect

Would you like to participate in a Resiliency Seed on the positivity effect? Please join me for a 15 minute Zoom Thursday, 18 June at 9:30am.