Josh Lindenmuth's Journal: The curse of negativity?

Have you ever wondered why the impact of negative actions is so much greater than those of positive actions? For instance, I've seen seemingly loyal and happy employees quit in rage after a single negative comment by a briefly inconsiderate manager or coworker was directed towards them. On the other hand, it seems to take hundreds of compliments and positive statements to create a similar level of fanatacism towards an organization.

How does the saying go ... trust takes a lifetime to build and a moment to break? How different the world would be if we could instantly build trust that would take years to destroy ...

curse of negativity ~= risk/reward of trust?

[yakiimo]

Hi there, just have seen a lot of comments from you recently and then noticed your journal entry.

I doubt anyone fully understands it, but I assume that evolution/reality has eliminated variations of people that trusted much without sufficient cause for that trust. They become exploited by others even if not intentionally. I think that is the reason you would not see a non-isolated group of people develop significantly faster, closer trust relationships than the average that we all deal with. On first though

Re:

[Josh Lindenmuth]

wow - never even thought about the evolutionary aspect of trust ... great thoughts!

Camel's Back

[bettiwettiwoo]

I think it might be more of a 'straw that broke the camel's back' kind of thing: the employee that quit might have been walking around with a building feeling of discontent - irrespective of positive response and encouragement; also, that feeling might have nothing (much) to do with their professional life - and then that one negative comment comes alongs, which makes that person's life just one-too-many-many-negative-things-to-bear and KABOOM! he/she explodes.

The effects of positive feedback is probably al