We have Alex Koch, University of Cologne, visiting and giving a talk at our Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology colloquium this Thursday (Oct 5th, 13:00; title and abstract follow).

(Why) good is more alike than bad: Implications for social cognition and judgment

Humans process positive information and negative information differently. These valence asymmetries are often summarized under the observation that ‘bad is stronger than good’, meaning that negative information has stronger psychological impact (e.g., in feedback, learning, or social interactions). This stronger impact is usually attributed to people’s affective or motivational reactions to evaluative information. We present an alternative interpretation of valence asymmetries in processing based on the observation that positive information is more similar than negative information. We explain this higher similarity based on the non‑extremity of positive attributes, discuss how it accounts for observable valence asymmetries in processing (classification, categorization, generalization, recognition etc.), and show how it predicts hitherto undiscovered phenomena.