So, as I ponder over why negative situations leave me traumatized, I can take relief in this article.
So, essentially - what was a physical survival mechanism is used wrongly in social and other contexts, causing great harm to us.
Our brains react to perceived “threats” and “rewards” in the social environment (in particular our needs for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness or fairness) in the same way and with the same intensity with which it reacts to physical threats (e.g. a predator, pain) and rewards (e.g. food, money). What I did not emphasize before was that threat responses have a greater impact and are far more powerful and easier to trigger than reward responses. This means that leaders need to be extremely attentive in managing perceived social threats in the workplace as these could ultimately have a severely destructive impact on the organization’s survival and success.
For example, studies have shown that a single traumatic experience can have long-term and even permanent effects on an individual’s health, happiness, outlook, self-worth and general behaviour. On the other hand there is little or no confirmation that a single positive experience can have even nearly the same impact.
For a relationship to succeed and remain stable, positive and good interactions must outnumber the negative and bad ones by no less than five to one. If the ratio drops lower than that, the relationship is unlikely to last. This means that contrary to what we might expect, the long-term success of our relationships actually depends more on not doing bad things than on doing good things.
So, essentially - what was a physical survival mechanism is used wrongly in social and other contexts, causing great harm to us.
Our brains react to perceived “threats” and “rewards” in the social environment (in particular our needs for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness or fairness) in the same way and with the same intensity with which it reacts to physical threats (e.g. a predator, pain) and rewards (e.g. food, money). What I did not emphasize before was that threat responses have a greater impact and are far more powerful and easier to trigger than reward responses. This means that leaders need to be extremely attentive in managing perceived social threats in the workplace as these could ultimately have a severely destructive impact on the organization’s survival and success.
For example, studies have shown that a single traumatic experience can have long-term and even permanent effects on an individual’s health, happiness, outlook, self-worth and general behaviour. On the other hand there is little or no confirmation that a single positive experience can have even nearly the same impact.
For a relationship to succeed and remain stable, positive and good interactions must outnumber the negative and bad ones by no less than five to one. If the ratio drops lower than that, the relationship is unlikely to last. This means that contrary to what we might expect, the long-term success of our relationships actually depends more on not doing bad things than on doing good things.
Numerous
studies have concluded that we experience negative emotions more
intensely than positive emotions. An interesting approach to this was
studies which looked at language – the code with which we describe
emotions. These studies concluded that negative emotions were more fully
represented (there were more words to describe them) than positive
emotions. One study which looked at words that described emotions showed
that 62% described negative emotions while only 38% described positive
emotions. Another looked at all the words in the English language
describing personality traits and found that an overwhelming 74% of the total described negative traits.
Even our senses seem to experience negative input more intensely than positive inputs. In one study participants
facial expressions were monitored as they were exposed to pleasant,
neutral and unpleasant odours. The results indicated that people’s
negative reactions to unpleasant odours were much stronger than their positive reactions to pleasant odours.
The negative effects of bad parenting and bad childhood experiences have a much stronger impact on our lives than good parenting and positive experiences.
This
tendency of bad having a stronger impact than good continues into
nearly every sphere of or existence. Bad first impressions last longer
and are harder to change than good ones; bad stereotypes are quicker to form and have a stronger influence on our behaviour than good ones; bad feedback has
a much more profound impact on how we view our performance than
positive feedback; the memory and effect of bad social interactions last
longer than that of good social interactions; and the impact of bad
health is stronger than that of experiencing good health.
So
where does this leave us? Neuroscience has shown us that our brains and
the brains of the people that we interact with are strongly influenced
by how it perceives the social environment in which we operate. When it
perceives a social threat (real or not) it goes into “survival mode” –
functioning well below its best when needed to make decisions, remember,
solve problems or collaborate with others. However, because we
experience “bad” so much more intensely than we experience “good” (at a
ratio of 5:1), we need to go further than just maintaining an equal balance
in our work relationships. Routinely treating people badly and then
asking for forgiveness is not an option. If we really want them engaged
and committed we need to minimize negative interactions and create a
culture where positive social interactions abound.
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