Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion
Rozin and Royzman propose a general negativity bias, shaped by innate predispositions and experience, with four components: negative entities are more potent than equivalent positive ones, negativity rises more steeply with proximity, negative information dominates when combined with positive, and negative entities are more varied and complex. They support the taxonomy with evidence from literature, history, religion and culture and from psychological research on learning, attention, impression formation, moral judgement, development and memory, and they review several explanations. They conclude that negative features make entities dominant and that negative entities are more contagious than positive ones.
Rozin and Royzman propose a general negativity bias, shaped by innate predispositions and experience, with four components: negative entities are more potent than equivalent positive ones, negativity rises more steeply with proximity, negative information dominates when combined with positive, and negative entities are more varied and complex. They support the taxonomy with evidence from literature, history, religion and culture and from psychological research on learning, attention, impression formation, moral judgement, development and memory, and they review several explanations. They conclude that negative features make entities dominant and that negative entities are more contagious than positive ones.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-26 via OpenAlex.
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Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(4), 296-320.