In class, a fellow student in my Positive Psychology class at UNM taught by Dr. Bruce Smith asked the question, “If the picture (Escher completed CLIV, also known as Angels and Devils, in 1960) were turned (45 degrees) so that the angel was on top would more people see the angel first?”
The answer, I think, is “yes.” Perception due to presentation is a crucial point to contemplate. Negativity bias is guided by our internal cues in reaction to external signals. However, those internal cues were once taught, shaped, and learned, to some extent by external cues from peers, friends, family, culture, and world views. Once cultivated, the internal cues learned and put in place in the early stages of development for each person continue like a software program until questioned.
Does this suggest that there are different types of negativity bias? Yes, there is personal negativity bias. But to what extent is that negativity bias groomed and related first to influences from peers, friends, family, culture, and world negativity bias? Do what measurable degree do individuals learn negativity bias? How much of each person’s negativity bias is innate? How is negativity bias essential for preserving the species, and to what measurable degree? Peers, friends, family, culture, and world negativity bias shape the individual negativity bias according to the time and place of the person’s existence. How do individuals grow out of a negativity bias related to being groomed during a war, a depression, or a holocaust? The question then is to what measurable degrees do the aforementioned affect an individual’s negativity bias. Then the next question is, can individuals deprogram themselves from negativity bias to a healthy degree? And if so, how?
