Do you suffer from Friggatriskaidekaphobia* also known as the fear of Friday the 13th? If so, today, December 13th, may not be your day. Not only is it a “Friday the 13th,” it is occurring in a year ending in “13”.
The fear associated with Friday the 13th is based on superstition – “that one event leads to the cause of another without any natural process linking the two events.”2 Friday the 13th is the result of people linking negative experiences to a specific day and date when there is no direct relation between them. While the superstitions and fears of dates or numbers are not logical, they are perpetuated by our natural bias toward negativity.
“Negativity bias is the psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories.”3 “Humans are thus biased toward behaving in a manner that will avoid negative experiences, and are much more likely to recall and be influenced by negative experiences of the past.”
If companies desire an engaged workforce, they must recognize the negativity bias of their employees. Given people’s tendency to recall negative incidents, it is vital that company leadership and direct managers focus on consistently communicating positive information, outcomes, and stories to their employees. “Occasional big positive experiences—say, a birthday bash—are nice. But they don’t make the necessary impact on our brain to override the tilt to negativity. It takes frequent small positive experiences to tip the scales.” 5 These “small positive experiences” could take place through daily MBWA (Management by Walking Around) interactions or by simply giving thanks to coworkers and direct reports.
Unfortunately, the relationship between the positive and the negative experiences is not one to one; a positive experience will not automatically cancel out a negative one. “The magic ratio is five to one. There needs to be five times as much positive feeling and interaction…to compensate for any negativity.”5
By recognizing the impact of negativity bias on employees and by working to quintuple the amount of positive communications, company leadership and direct managers will be in a better position to engage their employees.
How does negativity bias affect your company? What tips can you share on ways to communicate positive information to employees?
P.S. Funny timing. Last night (Thursday the 12th) my computer updated to Windows 8.1 and this morning, I couldn’t access anything on my computer. After hours (literally) of trying to diagnose the problem and countless shutdown-restarts, I asked a friend to look at it. When he did, he found no issues. It worked perfectly. Should I believe this was all related to today being “Friday the 13th”? I think I’ll just chalk it up to the poor timing of an update.
*The name is derived from Frigga, the English name of the Norse goddess for whom “Friday” is named, and triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number thirteen.1
1 Wikipedia.org. “Friday the 13th.” Wikepedia.org. Web. 12 December 2013.
2 Wikipedia.org. “Superstition.” Wikepedia.org. Web. 12 December 2013.
3 Wikipedia.org. “Negativity Bias.” Wikepedia.org. Web. 12 December 2013.
4 WiseGEEK.com. “What Is Negativity Bias?” WiseGEEK.com. Web. 12 December 2013.
5 Hara Estroff Marano. “Our Brain’s Negative Bias” Psychologytoday.com. 20 June 2003. Web. 12 December 2013.
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