Brickbats and Bouquets (28th March 2012)
Do you dwell on the negative rather than the positive? If that is the case you are not alone, according to a recent article in The New York Times “Praise is fleeting, but Brickbats we recall”.
In it Clifford Nass, a Professor of Communication at Stanford University tells us that the tendency to focus on what is negative is a common trait. “Some people do have a more positive outlook, but almost everyone remembers negative things more strongly and in more detail “he says.
There are physiological and psychological reasons why we do this. According to Professor Nass we process positive and negative information in different hemispheres of our brains. As negative emotions generally involve more thinking and the information is processed more thoroughly than positive ones, we tend to think more about negative events than happy ones.
Professor Nass makes another surprising observation. There is a tendency to see people who say negative things as cleverer than those who take a positive standpoint. This is apparently the reason we give greater weight to critical reviews.
The Stanford Professor also believes that the majority of people can only take one critical comment at a time. As Nass says “I have stopped people and told them “Let me think about this”. I am willing to hear more criticism but not all at one time”.
This finding that we remember disapproving remarks with more clarity undermines the effectiveness of the so called “criticism sandwich “. (Which has a less polite name in some circles.) In this ploy somebody is praised, then served a “meaty” criticism, then given a word of praise.
Professor Nass believes it would be better to offer the criticism straight “off the bat” then follow it with a list of positive comments.
My own experience from my working life, which is supported by coaching experiences is that managers do not praise their fellow employees often enough. A cautious view needs to be taken of making criticism, which should be delivered constructively and sparingly.