Negativity and extremity biases in impression formation: A review of explanations.

“Indeed, based on impression formation research suggesting that extreme ratings are perceived as more diagnostic [130], research in hospitality and tourism services has found that extreme reviews are often associated with higher diagnosticity and helpfulness [39, 45, 113].”

“A great deal of person-perception research has shown that negative information is generally considered to be more informative than positive information (e.g., Fiske, 1980; Peeters & Czapinski, 1990; Skowronski & Carlston, 1987, 1989; see also Peeters, Czapinski, & Lewicka, 1992a, 1992b).”

“The first asymmetric characteristic is actually rooted in Bell’s (1985) disappointment model and is generally known as the negativity bias (Kanouse 1984; Skowronski and Carlston 1989).”

“This hypothesis is based on broad evidence in psychology documenting a negativity effect in impression formation (e.g., Skowronski & Carlston, 1989).”

“…the impact of positive information (e.g., Baumeister, Bratlavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001; Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994; Fazio, Eiser, & Shook, 2004; Gidron, Koehler, & Tversky, 1993; Ito, Larsen, Smith, & Cacioppo, 1998; Reeder & Brewer, 1979; Rozin & Royzman, 2001; Skowronski & Carlston, 1989).”

“Skowronski and Carlston (1989) extended this notion and argued that positive and negative behavioral information varies in its diagnostic value with respect to specific trait categories.”

“Why else would the company try to hide it, when there was a considerable risk that others would find out anyway? Hence, message recipients might attribute more weight to the negative news when divulged by a third party, and less when disclosed by the company itself (cf. Dolnik et al. 2003; Skowronski and Carlston 1989…”

“Thus, rooted in evolutionary theory, negative information has special value in terms of “diagnosticity” (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989) or “vigilance” (Irwin et al., 1967) that is required to avoid negative consequences.”

“Likewise, compared to positive events, negative events have been found to be remembered better (Skowronski and Carlston 1989).”

“…biases are accentuated by the tendency, well documented in the psychological literature , for negative events to exert a disproportionate influence on beliefs, with positive events appearing to have much less subjective impact (e.g., Skowronski and Carlston 1989; Taylor 1991; Viscusi 1997).”

“In addition, this research focused on a single, special type of attitude object (people), whowe know to be judged inways that are quite different than other attitude objects (e.g., Skowronski & Carlston, 1989).”

“…in the latter studies (Henry et al., 2009, 2011; Krause et al., 2009; Prochnow et al., 2011) might be explained as follows: One of the possibilities is that positive emotions might be relatively easier to process than negative ones and could hence be more compensated (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989).”

“Evidence supporting a negativity bias has been found in domains as varied as impression formation (e.g., Skowronski & Carlston, 1989), person memory (e.g., Ybarra & Stephan, 1996), blood and organ donation (e.g., Cacioppo & Gardner, 1993), hiring decisions (e.g., Rowe, 1989), personnel evaluations…”

“poor performance (e.g., Ganzach, 1995; Skowronski & Carlston, 1989 ).”

“When subjects are asked to process multiple pieces of information with different valence about the same item or person (e.g., Fiske 1980; Klein 1996; Skowronski and Carlston 1989), negative information has a more signi fi cant impact on their fi nal impression.”

“Skowronski and Carlston (1989), in their development of the category diagnosticity model, contended that negative cues were more influential than positive cues because of ‘‘people’s implicit hypotheses concerning the relationships between behavioral cues and trait categories’’ (p. 139).”

“…recent research questioned the assumption that inconsistent behaviors are more strongly associated with other behavioral information about the actor, because support for this assumption was based on flawed measures of associative strength (Skowronski & Gannon, 2000; Skowronski & Welbourne, 1997).”

“…differently to positive and negative emotional stimuli—a phenomenon termed “negativity bias” (Soroka, 2014)—with negative information typically generating stronger affective and behavioral responses than positive information (for a review, see Skowronski & Carlston, 1989; Soroka et al., 2019).”

“This suggests either that the (negative) category “skinhead” is more strongly associated with violence than the (positive) category “priest” is associated with nonviolence or that negative information has more weight in judgment than does positive information (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989).”

“…explain how negative character or outcome information, which is generally Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 6 October 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 1637 more diagnostic than positive information (Reeder and Brewer, 1979; Skowronski and Carlston, 1987, 1989), shapes causalmental judgments.”

“Studies show that negative information is more diagnostic and hence is given more weight than positive information ( Skowronski & Carlston, 1989 ).”

“Negative attributes are less commonly observed in individuals than positive ones (Fiske, 1980), and are more instrumental for classifying individuals as “bad” than positive attributes are for classifying individuals as “good” (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989).”

“Others have suggested that greater arousal, cognitive processing, and emotional responses to negative interactions or life events may be more adaptive socially and physiologically (e.g., Skowronski & Carlston, 1989; Taylor, 1991).”

“, germ cells) to be more positive than they normally would (Skowronski and Carlston, 1989).”

“Due to the negativity bias (Skowronski and Carlston, 1989; Klein, 1991) created by the characterization of the defendant as a psychopath, however, we predicted that subsequent information related to being at low risk would not diminish jurors’ perceptions of the defendant’s degree of dangerousness or the severity of s…”

“The diagnosticity concept suggests that high uncertainty with regard to the actual realization of a cue’s value decreases the cue’s diagnosticity and, thus, its influence on the evaluation of a target object (Skowronski and Carlston 1989).”

“The most dominant explanation in the literature rests on the asymmetric diagnosticity of negative vs positive social behaviors (Reeder and Brewer, 1979; Skowronski and Carlston, 1989; Eiser et al., 2003).”

“In brief, Skowronski and Carl- ston (1987, 1989) argued that some behaviors are more diagnostic for trait attributions than are others, depending on the expected probability of a person performing the behavior, given that a person has or does not have the trait.”

“…counterintuitive, given many examples showing that negative information has usually more impact (e.g., Kanouse & Hanson, 1972; Peeters & Czapinski, 1990; Skowronski & Carlston, 1989), both from basic ratings (e.g., Anderson, 1965) to neurological evidence (Ito, Larsen, Smith, & Cacioppo, 1998).”

“…that negative behavior is often assumed to be more informative about the presence of a corresponding trait than positive behavior (for a review, see Skowronski & Carlston, 1989), new information about negative behavior may be perceived as more inconsistent with an initial positive impression than…”

“One of them concerns perceptual salience (see Skowronski & Carlston, 1989 for a review); negative information attracts more attention from people than positive information and, as a result, it is more likely to be selected (Fiske, 1980; Steiner, 1979).”

“…perceived as more diagnostic than others in distinguishing between different categories and that more diagnostic informational cues will have a stronger influence on consumers’ judgements and leave more lasting traces in their memory than less diagnostic information (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989).”

“Another one is offered by the theory that negative product attributes are thought to be characteristic of low-quality products, while positive attributes are characteristic of both low- and high-quality products (Skowronski & Carlston 1989) .”

“This sheds new light on the findings by Skowronski and Carlston (1989) described earlier: Both immoral (negative communion) and competent (positive agency) behaviors are seen as more diagnostic for a person’s overall morality and competence than are moral (positive communion) and incompetent (negative agency) behavior…”

“That is, positive information can be more influential during judgment formation if it is more diagnostic for a judgment (e.g., Skowronski & Carlston, 1989).”

“The assumption is that most people under most circumstances conform to the norm, thus any deviation makes a statement about the individual (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989).”

“_________________ Insert figure 2 about here _________________ A second perspective is suggested by figure 2b. Specifically some research suggests that negatively (but not positively) valenced feelings provide information value (Schwarz and Clore 1988; Skowronski and Carlston 1989).”

“A different explanation is that negative information is frequently more diagnostic than positive information (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989).”

“…ask how the results of our study can be reconciled with results from a large body of literature suggesting that adults often place a greater emphasis on negative information than on positive information when making inferences about people (see Skowronski & Carlston, 1989; Ybarra & Stephan, 1999).”

“Baumeister, Bratlavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001; Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Kanouse & Hanson, 1972; Skowronski & Carlston, 1989 ) which, as several authors have pointed out, lead people to be more strongly aVected by unjust than by just events (e.g., Folger, 1984; Folger & Cropanzano, 1998; see also Brockner & Wiesenf…”

“The scandal under investigation involved several celebrities from the Hong Kong entertainment Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 29(11): 885–896 (November 2012) View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mar C© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/mar.20571 885 industry.”

“Accessibility–diagnosticity theory (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989) and need–gratification theory pertaining to lowerorder economic goals (Agustin & Singh, 2005) suggest a concave relationship.”

“One study by Stein et al. (1998) tested whether possible selves predicted behavior over and above current selves and found this not to be the case.”

“Because of this salience, negative events are more diagnostic (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989) and processed more systematically.”

“…about the psychology Furthermore, it is worthwhile to note here that there are other areas of research within psychology (e.g., person perception) where negative information has been found to have more impact on people’s reactions than positive information (e.g., Skowronski and Carlston, 1989).”