There are more negatively-loaded words than positive ones — so what?

Negativity has a power over us. You know how it is. One bad thing can ruin your whole day, even if the day has been otherwise full of good or non-bad things. Infants react more quickly to an image of a snake than a frog, or unhappy or angry faces than happy ones. Then again, I reacted more strongly to Roy E. Baumeister’s face on the back flap of the book than I did to John Tierney’s, because Baumeister has a beard and a broad grin that suggests high self-esteem. And why not? He’s written or co-written more than a dozen books (first title, Meanings of Life) while Tierney has written only three.

The aim of the book is to get us to compensate for the brain’s natural reaction to see the worst in everything. It scolds our lawmakers for making hasty legislation (such as making it tougher to prescribe opioid painkillers, on the back of a scare over their misuse, therefore making thousands of people’s lives more painful, and increasing the use of illegal or more dangerous substances); or for making terrorism seem a greater threat than it actually is; or for doom-saying over climate change.