Description

Too often we focus just on improving ours or others’ weaknesses and making sure we don’t do the wrong thing.  This isn’t always bad, of course, but positive psychology argues that it is better psychologically to focus on our strengths.  Our natural bias towards of weaknesses is called the negativity bias.  This video discusses why we have this bias and what we can do about it.

Discussion Questions

• When can a negativity bias be good?  When can it be a bad thing?
• What was the ratio of negative to positive reinforcement that the video mentioned?
• Why do you think positive reinforcement is so important?

Keywords: positive psychology, character, virtue, education, biases, evolutionary psychology,