Holding on to the bad stuff
I was talking to a friend, and we were wondering why we seem to cling on to negative thoughts much more than positive ones... I hypothesises there might be an evolutionary purpose, and then went off to find out more... In this article https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-33/march-2020/life-mostly-good-despite-greater-power-bad-things ), it says that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are among the first concepts that children learn (even dogs learn them!). Brain research shows that the brain classifies something as good or bad almost immediately after figuring out what it is, in less than half a second. For most things, everyone gets a clear emotional/affective signal about whether it is good or bad. The article goes on to confirm (yay!) my evolutionary hypothesis: probably many things link back to survival and reproduction. Things that help sustain life in these ways are experienced as good, and things that are detrimental to survival and reproduction are bad. One of the first ‘conscious’