Paul Rozin and Edward Poyzman, researchers who coined negativity bias, have identified four elements that explain why the bias manifests. The four elements are negative potency, steeper negative gradients, negativity dominance, and negative differentiation.6
Negative Potency
Negative potency describes the idea that though negative and positive events or memories may be of equal in terms of magnitude or emotionality, that they are not necessarily equally salient.6
Steeper Negative Gradients
Rozin and Royzman refer to both negative and positive gradients as the perceived emotional slope of an event. For example, an upcoming dental surgery’s negative experience is regarded as more and more negative as the date of the appointment approaches, meaning there is a steep negative gradient. Rozin and Royzman found that adverse events are perceived as increasingly negative, thus have a steeper gradient than positive events are. Positive developments then have a flatter gradient in comparison to adverse events.6
Negativity Dominance
Rozin and Royzman describe negative dominance as the tendency for positive and negative events to skew towards an overall negative interpretation. An overall negative interpretation is in contrast to the actual average sum of our positive and negative components. To summarize we typically view the whole of an event or moment as more negative than the sum of its parts.6
Negative Differentiation
Negative differentiation states that since negative events are by nature more complicated than their positive counterparts, we require a more significant mobilization of cognitive resources to minimize the consequences of the event and deal with the experience, making it a more memorable and intense experience.7
Negative differentiation is consistent with a substantial amount of research indicating that negative emotions are more complicated than positive emotions. Research studies have suggested that as a result of this complexity, human vocabulary describing negative emotions and events is much more vibrant and descriptive than positive vocabulary.8