1991 asymmetrical effects positive negative events mobilization-minimization hypothesis

8/7/2019 1991 Asymmetrical Effects Positive Negative Events Mobilization-Minimization Hypothesis

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68 SHELLEY E. TAYLORacross suchdifferent classesof response categories, it isunlikelythat a single theoretical mechanism explains the pattern. Con-sequently, this third section reviews theoretical mechanismsthat may account for changes within particular classes of re-sponses, focusingon the strengths and limitations oftheir scopefor explaining the overall phenomenon. I then consider mecha-nisms whereby response-specific process models accountingfor partsof the mobilization-minimization pattern may be re-lated and integratedwitheach other. The article concludes witha discussion of the implications of themobilization-minimiza-tion pattern for the future studyof affective processes and va-lenced events.

Negative Events and MobilizationEvent Valence and Physiological Arousal

Do negative events evoke a stronger physiological responsethan positive ones?2 Although physiologistshave not directlyaddressed thisquestion, the assumption of such a difference isbuilt into frameworks that examine arousal and its correlates.Animalsand humans respond to the threat or reality ofnegativeevents with patterned, intense physiological changes. This re-sponsewas firstdescribed byWalter Cannon(1932) as the fight-or-flight reaction. Cannon proposed that when the organismperceives a threat, thebody is rapidly aroused and mobilized bythe sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system.This response is marked by the secretion of catecholaminesleading to increases in heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar,and respiration. According to Cannon, this concerted physic-logical response puts the organism in a state of readiness toattack the threat or to flee. Virtually all of the early work onphysiological stress involvednegative events arousing fear or, inthe case of humans, anxiety, sadness, and anger (e.g, Mahl,1952; Wolf &Wolff, 1947), the implicit assumption being thatpositive eventsdo not evoke the same intensity of response. Itshouldbenoted that the overwhelmingmajority ofcurrentlabo-ratory-based stress work continues to make use of negativeslressors, such as electric shock, cold pressor tests, and the like,thereby perpetuating the assumption that negative events andphysiological arousal are more clearly linked than positiveeventsand physiological arousal.

There is some evidence that arousal itself is more likely to beinterpreted negatively than positively. When people find them-selves in a state of arousal that they cannot explain (as mayoccurwhen epinephrine has been administered without an ex-planation of its side effects), people are more likely to explainthe resulting arousal negatively, for example, as feelings of un-ease or nervousness, rather than positively (Marshall & Zim-bardo, 1979; Maslach,1979).Thus, arousal persemay be experi-enced as aversive unless otherwise labeled as positive.

Research on attitudes shows that evidence in opposition toone's own opinions elicits physiological arousal. Studies thathave exposed human subjects to opinions that disagree withtheir own find greater arousal than when opinions agree or areneutral with respect to the subjects' opinions (Burdick &Burnes, 1958; Clore & Gormry, 1974; Dickson & McGinnies,1966; Gormly, 1971,1974;Steiner, 1966).3

Evidence suggestive of a greater role for negative events inevoking physiological activity is also implied by research onstressful life events. This research measures the number ofstressful life events a person has encountered over a period oftime and then relates it to subsequent illness. Although researchinitially suggested that both positive and negative events werecapable of producing physical disordersbecause of their capac-ity to force the individual to make changes and accommoda-tions, research nowindicates that negative eventsare substan-tially more potent in this regard than are positiveones(e.g, Suls& Mullen, 1981). That is, when the amount of change is con-trolled for,negative eventsare more strongly related to adversehealth outcomes. It should be noted that these findings are notnecessarily evidence for the greater physiological impact ofneg-ativeover positive events. It ispossible that negative events exerttheir adverse effects on physical health through mechanismsother than direct physiological impact. Farexample, in the caseof health outcomes, stressful negative life events may under-mine the effective practice of healthful behaviors, leaving peo-ple more vulnerable to illness. The evidence is, then, merelysuggestive. Moreover, positive events can produce physiologicalarousal justas negative events can (Levi,1965;Patkai,1971; seeFrankenhaeuser, 1975, for a review).

In the physiological literature, then, there is an implicit as-sumption of and some evidence for the belief that negativeeventselicit greater physiological arousal than comparableposi-tive events. However, the kind of research evidence that wouldsupport the point most clearly is not generally available. Aclearer test would involve calibrating positive and negativeevents for their affective equivalency and then assessing theirimpact on physiologicalfunctioning. At present, then, theevi-dence is suggestive, not conclusive.

2 There is an issue of calibration involved incomparingnegative andpositive events: Howdoes one know that the negative stimuli (events,trait words, and the like) are as negative as the positive stimuli arepositive? The strongest casecan be made in studies in which the posi-tiveand negative stimuli involvedoccur on the sameintervalscale(e.g.,the costs or gains in dollars of a wager): Any inequivalency of thepositive and negative stimuli is psychological, and therefore is partofthe phenomenon, not aconfound. Alessstrongbutdefensiblecasecantie made when the positive and negative stimuli are rendered equiva-lent on some scale related to the inference to be drawn. Positive andnegative trait adjectives may be matched on evaluative extremity, forexample, or positive and negative life events may be matched as to thechange or the disruption they produce. A weaker form of inferenceexists instudies that sample a rangeof positive and negative stimuli onthe assumption that meaningful differences in intensity will random-ize out. One can assume that in the absence of calibratingpositive andnegativestimuli, their impactson relevantresponseswouldbeas likelyto favor positive as negative events and that any systematic finding thatnegative events are morepotent than positive oneswouldconstituteaninformative difference.

3 Inshadowing experiments involvinga dichotic listening task, sub-jectswerearousedby words presented in the unattended channel thathad previously been paired with shock without beingaware that theyhad heard them. The control words were affectively neutral, however,raising the possibility that words paired with reinforcement mightevoke the same response (Corteen &Dunn, 1974; Corteen &Wood,1972; von Wright, Anderson, &Stenman, 1975).


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THE MOBILIZATION-MINIMIZATION HYPOTHESIS 69

Event Valence and AffectAs in the research on physiological responses, studies of

emotion havenot directly investigated the hypothesis that nega-tive events evoke stronger emotional reactions than do positiveevents. However, several lines ofworkare consistent with suchan argument.

Negative events appear to be more potent determinants ofmood than positive events. In a series of six investigations ex-ploring the determinants of mood acrosssituations as varied asdriving, test-taking, somatic symptoms, and pregnancy, Pers-son and his colleagues (Appel, Blomkvist, Persson, & Sjoberg,1980; Persson, 1988a, 1988b, 1988c; Persson &Sjoberg, 1985,1987; Sjoberg, Persson, &Svensson, 1982) found that expecta-tions of future negative eventswere the strongest determinantofmood.Moreover,the negative mood evokedbysuch expecta-tions dominated and suppressed the influence of positive ex-pectations on mood.4

Research on stressful life events also suggests a greater rolefor negativeover positive eventsinevoking emotional reactions.When the change and disruption of positive and negative lifeevents is equated, negative events are associated with more dis-tress, and they predict depression better than do positive events(Myers, Lindenthal, Pepper, &Ostrander, 1972; Paykel, 1974;Vinokur& Selzer,1975). Positivestressful events(suchashavinga baby) tend to evoke a mix of responses, including positiveemotions in response to the valence of the event but distress inresponse to the changes that positive life eventscan produce.

Handler's (1975, 1984) theory of emotion accords negativeevents a central, though implicit, role. He argued that emotionoccurs whenever an organisms goals are interrupted. The emo-tion that results is likely to be labeled negatively, because in-terruption canproduce feelings ofhelplessnessand lossofcon-trol. Mandler argued that positive emotions are rarely experi-enced as intensely as negative emotions because they occurwhenpeople feel incontrol. Innegative emotions, the degreeofarousal is higher. Davitz (1969) concurred that the degree ofactivation involved seems to be less for positive emotions thanfor negative emotions. Schwarz (1990) suggested that negativeemotions signal that action needs to be taken, whereas positiveemotions do not, a point that may account for the apparentgreater activation associated withnegative emotions (seeFrijda,1988; Kanouse &Hanson, 1972).

Event faience and AttentionNegative affective states lead people to narrow and focus

their attention (e.g., Broadbent, 1971; Easterbrook, 1959; Ey-senck, 1976), particularly to features that elicited the negativestate (Schwarz, 1990; Wegner &Vallacher, 1986),and they ap-pear to do so to a greater degree than positive events and infor-mation (seePeeters&Czapinski, 1990, for areview).Forexam-ple, in a study of person perception, Fiske (1980) presentedsubjects with sentences describing a person about whomtheywere told to form an impression. Subjects attended dispropor-tionately to negative information by looking at it longer thanwas true for positive or neutral information. This effect wasindependent of the unexpectedness of negative information,although unexpected, as opposed to expected, information also

engaged attention more. In a similar vein, Hansenand Hansen(1988) showed an asymmetry in the processing of facial infor-mation.They found that threateningfaces "popout"ofcrowds,in comparison to faces with more positive expressions.

Analyses of what people think about spontaneously alsoshow a negativity bias. Klinger, Barda, and Maxeiner (1980)asked college student subjects to list up to seven things theythought about a lot and up to seven things they thought aboutvery little. The items these students reported thinking aboutmost were a threatened relationship, the challenge of someforthcoming event, and unexpected difficulties in pursuit of agoal. Thus, negative events, particularly unresolved ones, ap-pear to be focal in consciousness, at least among college stu-dents.

Weighting ofValenced Information in JudgmentsAwide varietyofresearchhassuggested that negative aspects

of an object, event, or choice are weighted more heavily thanpositiveaspects in judgments (Kahneman &Tversky, 1984;seeCzapinski & Peeters, 1990; Peeters & Czapinski, 1990;Skowronski&Carlston, 1989, for reviews).Intasks that involveforming impressions of others from trait adjectives, sentencedescriptions, or moral and immoral behavior descriptions, neg-ative information tends to be given more weight than positiveinformation (eg, Anderson,1965,1968,1974;Birnbaum, 1972,1973, 1974; Dreben, Fiske, & Hastie, 1979; Feldman, 1966;Fiske, 1980; Hamilton & Huffman, 1971; Hodges, 1974; Ka-rouse & Hanson, 1972; Lampel & Anderson, 1968; Oden &Anderson, 1971; Reeder & Coovert, 1986; van der Plight &Eiser, 1980; Warr, 1974;Wyer, 1974;Wyer&Watson, 1969;seeFiske &Taylor, 1984,1991; Kanouse &Hanson, 1972; for re-views). Negative information is also weighted more heavily inthe attribution of evaluations to others (Abelson & Kanouse,1966). The disproportionate effects of negative information oc-cur when the positiveand negativestimuliareequally polarizedonagood-badevaluation scale (e.g, Anderson, 1966;Feldman,1966).

Mostof the impression formation studiesinvolvetraitorsen-tence descriptions of hypothetical others. Similar effects, how-ever, havebeen observed in more naturalistic situations involv-ing more meaningful impressions. For example, in a study ofhusbands' and wives' perceptions of each other, Weiss, Hops,and Patterson (1973) found that unpleasant events accountedfor more variance inratings than did pleasurable events.

Because negativeevents tend to be unexpected, unexpected-ness provides an alternative account for the impact of negativeinformation on impressions. Studies that have empirically dis-entangled frequency from negativity, however, have found largeand independent effects of negativity (Abelson & Kanouse,1966; Feldman, 1966; Fiske, 1980).

4 It should be noted that longitudinal studies have generally notfound a relationship between negativeevents and latermood (Stone&Neale,1984;seealsoEckenrode,1984). StoneandNeale suggested thatit may be because people actively attempt to manage and undo thestress associated with negative events, an explanation that is compati-ble with the idea of long-term minimization of the impact ofnegativeevents.


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70 SHELLEY E. TAYLOR

A few studies have found a reversal of the usual effect ofweighting negative information more heavily than positive in-formation (Skowronski & Carlston, 1987;see Skowronski &Carlston, 1989, for a review). These studies have found thatwhen subjects are making judgments about another's abilitytheytend toweight positive information moreheavilythan neg-ative information. Skowronskiand Carlston (1987) argued thatthis is because in the ability domain, positive information isdiagnostic, whereas inotherdomainsofperson perception, neg-ative information may more commonly be diagnostic (cf.Reeder & Brewer, 1979). They argued that a positivity biaswould be expected in any context in which positive acts areperformed almost exclusively by people who are good on theattribute, and negative acts are performedby people who areeither good or bad on the attribute in question. Interestingly,however,even in theirstudies, diagnosticityaffected only socialjudgmentsbut not social memory; recall was characterized by anegativity bias for behaviors relating to abilityas well as otherperson attributes, consistent with prior literature. As yet, thereappears to be no evidence available to assess whethernegativitybiases in judgment would persist ifcuediagnosticity were con-trolled for. Nonetheless,thesestudies represent at leastapartialqualification to thepreponderance of evidencesuggesting nega-tivity biases in the weightingof information in judgment.3

Research on risk-taking indicates a substantially greater de-terrence value of costs over the attraction of gains (Kogan &Wallach, 1967). The potential costs of a venture more stronglypredict unwillingness to take risks than the potential benefits tobe derived. Even when the identical scenario is described incost-versus-benefit terms, people are more conservative whenthe choice is phrased interms of costs (Tversky &Kahneman,1986; see Kanouse&Hanson, 1972, for a review). This bias infavor of costs holds up when potential positive and negativeoutcomes can be calibrated in equivalent terms, as in moneylost versus money gained inawager (Kanouse&Hanson, 1972;Slovic &Lichtenstein, 1968). The effects may be stronger whenreal costs (e.g., lossofmoney)are involved than whenhypotheti-cal losses are involved (Slovic, 1969).

Developmentally, conceptions of negative actions and theirconsequences appear to occur earlier than conceptions ofpraiseworthyacts. Negativeevents are discriminated and evalu-ated by children in an adultlike manner before their positivecounterparts (Fincham, 1985). These behaviors seem to evokethe child's attention because they interrupt action, whereas ap-propriate or positive behavior does not (cf. Mandler, 1975).As aresult, children become punishment-oriented (Piaget, 1932),learning the rules that govern negative behavior before thosethat govern positive behavior.

In summary, research from a variety of different judgmenttasks indicates that negativeinformation is generally weightedmore heavily than positive information, although systematicexceptions have been identified.

Valenced Events and Altributional ActivityNegative events elicit more causal attributionalactivity than

do positive events(Peelers& Czapinski, 1990). People considernegativeevents longer and survey more potential causal infor-mation than is true for positive or neutral events(Abele,1985;

Bohner, Bless, Schwarz, &Strack, 1988; Wong, 1979; Wong &Weiner, 1981; see Kanouse &Hanson,1972). Negativeacts alsotypically elicit more extreme attributions (Birnbaum, 1972;Jones &Davis, 1965; Kanouse &Hanson, 1972).

The evidence relating negative events to increased attribu-tional activity is not confined to laboratory studies using sen-tence descriptions and trait adjectives (Weiner,1985). Forexam-ple, in their study of married couples, Holtzworth-Munroe andJacobson (1985)found that negative behaviors evoked more at-tributional activity than did positive behaviors. In addition,husbands (but not wives) inchronically unsatisfying marriagesengaged in more attributional thoughts than did the happilymarried husbands. More generally, Weiner (1985) found thatfailure to meet goals produced spontaneous causal attributionactivity.

Research suggesting that unexpected and negative eventselicit causal activity (Hastie, 1984; Wong & Weiner, 1981) hasbeen difficult to interpret, because negative actions are typi-cally also unexpected. To address this ambiguity, Bohner et al.(1988)manipulatedsubjective probabilityand valence indepen-dentlyand found that the intensity of causal reasoningand thenumber of reasons suggested for an outcome wasgreater afternegative than positive actions regardless of prior probability;there wereno differences incausal explanation for unexpectedversus expected events. Other studies that have disentanglednegative from unexpected events have also found stronger ef-fects for negative events than for positive events.The tendencyto engage in attributional activity for negative events amongmarried couples may actually be stronger for frequent eventsthan for infrequent events (Fincham & O"Leary, 1983; Holtz-worth-Munroe& Jacobson, 1985; see also Fincham, 1985). Onbalance, the research evidence suggests that negative eventsproduce more causal attribution activity than positive events,controlling for unexpectedness."Peelersand Czapinski (1990) concluded that negative stimulilead to more cognitiveworkand more complex cognitive repre-sentations thandopositivestimulimore generallyForexample,negative stimuli are perceived as more complex than positive

5 Various theoretical explanationshave beenoffered for the differen-tial impact of negative versus positive information onjudgments. In-formation-processingexplanationsare provided byFiske's(1980)con-tention that negative information is more informative, Reeder andBrewer's (1979) explanation based on judgmental schematas, andSkowronski and Carlston's(1989)categorydiagnosticitymodel. Moti-vational explanations include Irwin, Tripodi, and Bieri's (1967) vigi-lance hypothesis, Peeters's (1971) mushroom model, Kanouse andHanson's (1972) interference model,and Peeler'sandCzapinski(1990)behavioraladaptation model. It goesbeyond the purposeof thisarticleto evaluate each of these domain-specific accounts. The reader inter-ested in pursuing this point, however, is referred to Peetere andCza-pinski (1990) for a review of these theories. Theseauthors ultimatelyconcluded that "hot"motivational-based explanations account betterfor the negativity effect than "cold"information-processing accounts.

' There isone exception tothis pattern. Hastie (1984) manipulatedthe unexpectedness and socialdesirability ofactionsdescribingothersand found that socially undesirable events elicited no greater causalactivity than desirable events. Rather, unexpected events producedmore attributional activity than expected events. Hastie credited thisanomalous finding to the nature of the stimulusmaterials.


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ones,evenwhentheir informational valueisequivalent.Evalua-tions of negativestimulus persons produce more complex de-scriptions involving a mixture of both positive and negativeterms than descriptionsof positively valued persons. Inan anal-ysis of over 17,000 psychological articles on socially negativeand positive phenomena, those on negative phenomena out-numbered positive ones by far and involved a richer and moreelaborate terminology (Czapinski, 1985). The evidence sug-gesting that negative events produce more cognitive activity andmore complex cognitive representations than positive eventsisplentiful (seePeelers &Czapinski, 1990, for a review).

Mood and Cognitive ActivityA phenomenon related to the previous points concerns the

impact ofmoodon judgmental processing strategies. The focusof the research has been on negative mood per se rather than onthe negative events that give rise to it, but this may be an acci-dent of research interest rather than a meaningful empiricaldifference. The phenomenon concerns the associationofnega-tive mood with more complex, elaborate information-process-ing strategies.

Considerable research suggests that apositivemood, suchasthat induced by focusing on positive events, is associated withthe use ofrapid and relativelyeffortless information-processingstrategies. Compared with those in a neutral mood, those in apositive mood use intuitive, simple solutions to problems (Isen,Means, Patrick, & Nowicki, 1982), make greater use of judg-mental heuristics (Isen et al., 1982), use broad and inclusivecategories rather than specific categories in classification tasks(Isen& Daubman, 1984),make decisions morequickly,anduseless information (Isen& Means, 1983). In contrast, relative to apositiveor neutral mood, negative mood produces more gather-ing of diagnostic information (Hildebrand-Saints & Weary,1989), more chunking ofinformation (Isen et al, 1987;Leight &Ellis, 1981), more complex processing strategies, less use ofcognitive heuristics, and more systematic elaboration of a com-plexmessage (Bless, Bohner, Schwarz, & Strack, 1990; Fiedler,1988; Isen et al, 1982; Schwarz, 1990; Sinclair, 1988).

People in negative moods versus positive moods also responddifferently to persuasive communications. Subjects in a "sad"mood consistently elaborate persuasive messages more and arepersuaded by strong but not weak arguments (Schwarz, Bless,Bohner, & Strack, 1988). Those in a positive mood elaborateless and are equally persuaded by strong and weak arguments(Blesset al, 1990; Schwarz et al, 1988;Worth&Mackie, 1987).

It should be noted that at clinically significant levels of de-pression, these effects may be eliminated (see Sullivan &Con-way, 1989,for a review of this literature). Althoughthe thoughtprocesses ofdepressed peopleareconsiderably slowedand care-ful (like those of people in a negative mood), their ability tointegrate information and use complex strategies of inferencemaybecompromised (Abramson,Alloy, &Rosoff, 1981). In theAbramson et al. (1981) study, depressed people were, however,able to use a complex hypothesis generated by the experi-menter, but not when they had to generate it themselves. Theseauthors concluded that depression produces a motivationaldefi-cit, but not necessarily an associative deficit.7

The impact of negative mood on processing strategies is not

confined to the negative event that gave rise to the negativemood, but it is broader in its effects. One reason for this differ-ence maystemfrom the fact that negativemood is less intense,morediffuse, and less tied to specificevents compared with thenegative emotions evoked by sudden unexpected events (e.g,fear and anxiety). Negative mood may be a residual effect ofsome negativeevent that has abated in intensity or it may not belinked to a specific event at all. \fet, onbalance, it seems to exerta similar, though broader, effect on processing, making the or-ganism more controlled, conservative, and (usually) complexthan under conditions of neutral or positivemood, although inthe extreme, these effects may reverse.

Valenced Events and the Initiation of Social ActivityAre negativeevents more likely to lead to social mobilization

than positive events? That is, are people more likely to turn toothers, enlist the support of others, or seek out companionshipin response to negative events over positive events? The evi-dence assessing this question directly isgenerally not present inthe social psychological literature. What would be required arestudies that establish the affective equivalency of positive andnegativeevents and then assess various indicators ofsocial mo-bilization. Although thiskindof research is not currentlyavail-able, certain aspectsofthe social psychological literature speakto this point.

Negative events elicit certain kinds of social activity morereliably than positive events. For example, affiliation withothers appears to be abasic response to threat. Indeed, promi-nent theories of attachment(Bowlby, 1969) argue that the desireto be withothers stems predominantly from theneeds for safetyand protection from harm. Twosocial psychological literaturesspeak directly to the impact of negative or stressful eventsonsocial activity:workderived fromsocialcomparison theory andresearch on social support. Both literatures have as core as-sumptions the idea that stressful, ambiguous, or fear-arousingconditions lead people to seek out the company of others.

When people find themselves in challenging, threatening, orunfamiliar circumstances, their needs to evaluate their situa-tion, resources, and emotional reactions are often paramount(Festinger, 1954). This focus on affiliation inresponse to threatiseven more explicit in Schachter's (1959) affiliation model, inwhich he posited that circumstances evoking strong negativeemotions suchas fear will prompt affiliation for the purpose ofsocial comparison. Considerable research supports the linksbetween fear and affiliation, although some people seem morelikely than others to affiliate under stress. Similarly, the socialsupport literature suggests that whenpeoplearefacing stressfulor negative events, they turn to their social support networksforemotional support, help in appraising the negative event, andinformation (e.g. House, 1981).

7 Sullivan and Conway (1989)argued, however, that negative affectalso leads tolow-effort attributional processing. Thiswouldseem to flyin the face of the research just reviewed, suggesting that negativeevents produce more attributional activity than positive ones. Theirmeasure of effort, however, was the degree to which subjects madedispositional attributionsforanother'sbehavior, which may or may notbe an appropriate measure of effort.


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72 SHELLEY E. TAYLORIn apparent contradiction, the social comparison literature

has suggested certain negative conditions under which peoplemaychoose not to be withothers. Threatening events that elicitembarrassment eliminate the findingthat peopleawaiting nega-tive events choose to be with similar others (Sarnoff & Zim-bardo, 1961). It is unknown, however, whether other forms ofsocial activity might be initiated by those who reject the com-panyofsimilarothers under threat,suchas thedesireto bewitha partner, family, or friends. A hemorrhoid patient facing sur-gerymight not wish to comparepainful details withother hem-orrhoid patients,for example, but might want his or her partnercloseby.

Thus, certain kinds of social activity are more reliably initi-ated in response to negative events than to positive events.There may be other kinds of social activity that are more likelyin response topositive eventsasopposed to negative events.Forthemost part, theliterature has notsystematically assessed thispossibility. The point remains to be definitively addressed bythe social psychological literature on event valence and socialmobilization.

Summary and ObservationsIn summary, then, negative eventsappear to mobilize physio-

logical,affective, cognitive, and certain typesofsocial resourcesto agreater degree than do positive or neutral events. In thissense, there appears to be anasymmetry in the impact ofnega-tive events. One could stop at this point and argue that theevocative potential of negative events has survival benefits andthat over many thousands ofyears,thisadaptive asymmetryhasevolved to maximize the likelihood of a rapid and effectiveresponse to threat (Hansen & Hansen, 1988; Peelers & Cza-pinski, 1990; Pratto & John, in press).

There is, however, another intriguing asymmetry in the or-ganisms response to negative versus positive or neutral eventsthat should first be considered. Following the occurrence of anegativeevent and the organisms concerted response to it, op-posing responses set in that seem to damp down, mute, andeven erase its existence. I now consider the evidence for thisposition.

Minimization of Negative EventsAbatement of Arousal

Human and animal physiology demonstrate anoffsetting re-sponse to arousal, which occurs automatically as a compensa-tory process that reverses itseffects. Following the initiation ofsympathetic nervous system activity in response to an emer-gency, parasympathetic nervous system activity is initiated thathas the effect of damping down arousal. Blood pressure, heartrate, blood sugar,and respirationaregradually slowed. Arousaldeclines gradually, but usually withinashort time theorganismisbackto itsnormal state(Levinthal, 1990). Althoughtheabate-mentofarousal occurs in responsetoboth positiveandnegativeevents, the impact of this abatement may be more significant inthe case of negative events. This may occur, first, because asnoted in the last section, arousal ismore likelyto be interpretednegatively than positively, and because negative events may ini-

tially produce greater physiological arousal than istrue of posi-tive events.

Whether negative events would prompt agreater compensa-tory reversal than positive events, given equivalent initialarousal between the positiveand negative events, is as yet un-known. This kindofevidence wouldbe the strongest evidencefor the hypothesis of greater minimization following negativeevents. Atpresent, however, theevidence suggestsonly that thecompensatory reversal for events producing initial arousal de-pends on the degreeof initial arousal.

Offsetting Negative Emotions With Positive OnesMany motivation and emotion theorists have observed that

whenpeople experience intense negative emotions such as fearor anxiety in response to threatening events,after the arousingstimulus conditions are removed, there is anoffsetting positiveemotional experience of relief or profound relaxation. Theseemotional reactions appear to gobeyond the mere abatementof the negative reactions that would be expected with the re-moval of the aversive stimulus conditions. This phenomenonhas been referred to as the safety reaction (Woodworth &Schlosberg, 1954), the relief response (Mowrer, 1960), or therelaxation response (Denny, 1971). In hisstudyofparachutists,Epstein (1967) observed a similar response of exhilaration inthose whojumped safely, once theywere on the ground. In thecontext of opponent-process theory, Solomon and Corbit (1974)reviewed a large amount of literature documenting exactly thispoint, that affectively negativeresponses to threat areoffset byopposing positive emotions following the termination of theaversive stimulus. An extended discussion of opponent-processtheory is deferred to a later point in this article.

It should be noted that there is no comparable available re-search concerning whether,after experiencing intense positiveemotions, people experience an offsetting intense negativeemotional experience of anger, sadness, depression, or someother corresponding negative psychological state. Commonex-perience suggests that when people experiencean intenselypos-itive event, they may experience a period of mild ennui by con-trast, once arousal and excitement caused by the event dissi-pate. But this does not appear to be an offsetting responsecomparable to the safety reaction, the relief response, or therelaxation response, seen in response to negative experience.Although evidencefor such a function may yet emerge, the factthat it has not been documented by research suggests that itmay not exist.

Recall ofValenced EventsBecause negative events elicit more cognitive activity at en-

coding, one might assume that as elaborated memories theywould be easily recalled and richly detailed. This does not,however,appear to be thecase. Relativetopositive events, nega-tive events appear to be less accessible in memory. Reviewing52 studies, Matlin and Strang (1978) found a persistent recalladvantageof positive over negative information, a phenomenonthey termed the Pollyanna principle. These studies also re-vealed that positive material is recalled faster than negative ma-


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terial. Studies of autobiographical memory havealsosuggesteda tendency forpeople to remember a higher proportion of posi-tive events thanof negative events(Baddeley,1982; Ehrlichman&Halpern, 1988;Linton,1982,1986; Thompson, 1985; Wagen-aar, 1986; White, 1982).Whydoes this differential recall occur?

Ease and extent of recall are determined by factors in addi-tion to attention and elaboration at initial encoding,suchas thedegree towhichthe event is associated withotherevents and thedegree to which the memory is "rehearsed," that is, replayed.Because negative events are less common than positive ones,there is less material with which any one negative event can beassociated, at least affectively (Isen, 1984). Because people ac-tivelyattempt to reinterpret negative events to be at least neutralor even positive (seeTaylor &Brown, 1988, for a review), thedomain of events to which a single negative event can be asso-ciated is also reduced (see Fiske & Taylor, 1984,1991; Green-wald, 1980;Taylor &Brown, 1988, for reviews). Positive infor-mation may also be processed more efficiently and accuratelythan negative information (Matlin &Strang. 1978). There alsoappears to be resistance to making associations to negativelytoned material (Isen,1984).For all these reasons, negative asso-ciations in memory tend to be weaker and less common thanpositive associations. People remember positive material moreeasily and quickly.

Negativeaffect does not facilitate the recall of negative mate-rial to the same degree that positiveaffect facilitates the recallofpositive material (Isen, Shalker, Clark, &Karp, 1978;Nasby&Yando, 1982; Natale&Hantas,1982;Teasdale & Fogarty,1979;Teasdale & Taylor, 1981; Teasdale, Taylor, &Fogarty, 1980;seeMayer & Salovey, 1988, for a review). Isen (1984) argued thatthese effects demonstrate acontrolled mood repair effort, suchthat when people are in a bad mood, they try to make them-selves feel better. The fewstudies that have failed to show anasymmetry in recall between negative and positive mood (e.g.,Bower, 1981; Bower, Gilligan, &Montiero, 1981; Bower, Mon-tiero, & Gilligan, 1978)have presented subjects with instruc-tions to maintain their inducedaffective states, thus creating anexperimental demand for subjects not to work themselvesoutof their mood.

Analternative interpretation for the failure of negativemoodtofacilitate recall ofnegative informationisthat because nega-tive mood is not as consistently and successfully induced aspositive mood, the effects of negative mood may be more vari-able. However, Isen (1984)argued that even in studies inwhichmanipulation checks indicate that the induced negative state isas intense as the induced positive state, the impact of positiveand negative moods on recall are still not parallel. Negativeaffect appears simply to be a weaker retrievalcue than positiveaffect.

Itshould be noted that the mood repair hypothesis itself pre-dicts cognitive factors that would perpetuate asymmetries be-tween positive and negative mood in recall. To the extent thatpeople habitually attempt to work themselves out of negativemoods, negative material may be less elaborated and lesscon-nected in the cognitive system than positive material, and con-sequently mayaugment the motivational affects ofmood repair,resulting in the attenuated affects of negative material just de-scribed (Isen, 1984).

Causal and Analytic Reasoning and the Undoing ofNegative Events

Earner, I noted that negativeevents are more likely than posi-tiveor neutral ones to elicit causal reasoning. This asymmetrymay also provide a basis for undoing the impact of negativeevents. Thereare at leastthree hypothesesfor whythis mightbethe case. The most obvious one is that an increase in causalreasoning can help a person take action that can end a negativeevent. Alternatively, the person can at least learn how to avoidsimilar negative events in the future.

There is evidence that the causal explanations that resultfrom negativeevents may be adopted to minimize the impact ofthosenegative eventsinother waysaswell. Bohner el al.(1988)suggested that an intensified search for acausal explanation fora negative event increases the likelihood that an external andself-irrelevant attribution for the event may be identified. Sev-eral studies have, in fact, demonstrated an asymmetry inattri-butions for positive versus negative eventsconsistent with theBohner et al. hypothesis. Schwarz and Clore (1988) found thatwhen presented with an opportunity to misattribute theirmood to external factors, people in a negative mood took ad-vantage of the opportunity to externalize that bad mood anddispel it, whereas people in a positive mood were less likery tomake use of the misattribution opportunity Similarly, Wil-liams, Ryckman, Gold, and Lenny (1982) found that subjectstook the opportunity to explainaway their negative moods butnot their positive moods. Arkin,Gleason, and Johnston (1976)found that people receiving positive feedback were insensitiveto situational factors that could explain that positive mood. In asimilar vein, Gilovich and Douglas (1986) found asymmetricalevaluationsof valenced outcomes in a gambling situation. Theymanipulated whether the outcome of a gambling round wasperceived as influenced by a series of anomalous or flukeevents.Losers used the fluke events to explainaway their losses,whereas winners discounted the significance of the flukeevents.

Research on the self-serving attributionalbias isalsoconsis-tent with this point. Research has consistently demonstratedthat people take more credit for successful outcomes than forfailed outcomes (Zuckerman, 1979). Failed outcomes tend tobe attributed to temporary internal factors or to external fac-tors. Moreover, this bias appears to increase with time, suchthat initially self-serving explanations maybecome even moreso as events fade in memory (Burger, 1986; Burger & Hunt-zinger, 1985). Thus, there is some evidence that the search for acausal explanation fornegative events is not merely a responseto the need to predict and control that event and similar eventsin the future, butalsotoexplainaway theevent in amanner thathas fewlastingimplications.

Bohner et al. (1988) also suggested that the increases incausal and analytic reasoning that occur in response to negativeevents and their corresponding negative affective states maythemselves mute the impact of the negative state. That is, ifthinking is focused on causal and analytic analysis, the emo-tional experience may not be as intense. In thisway, the increasein causal analysis and analytic reasoning that occurs in re-sponse to a negative event may act as a coping strategy foremo-tional management (Spiesman, Lazarus, Mordkoff, &David-


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son, 1964;Strack,Schwarz, &Gschneidinger, 1985;see Lazarus&Folkman,1984).

People ResistNegative MoodsResearch on affect indicates asymmetries in the impact of

positive and negative moods on thoughts and behavior. A firstobservation is that it is more difficult to induce a bad mood insubjects than a good mood (Brown &Taylor, 1986; Worth &Mackie, 1987). Because a bad mood is experienced as aversive,subjects fight the induction, whether provided by the experi-menter or undertaken by the subject himself or herself.

The spread of affect that one readily observes in subjects in apositivemood does not occur to the same degree insubjects in anegative mood. Once a negative mood has been induced, peo-pleoften spontaneously makeefforts to work themselves out ofthe badmood.Forexample, people inapositive mood are morelikely to help another personbecauseof their good mood. How-ever, people in a negative mood are, under certain circum-stances, also more likely to help another person, apparentlybecause the action has the potential to alleviate the bad mood(Cialdini, Darby, & Vincent, 1973; Jsen, Horn, & Rosenhan,1973;Weyant,1978).

For example, although negative mood sometimes inhibits al-truism (Mayer&Salovey, 1988), negative emotions suchasguiltor embarrassment, incompetence, or sadness have sometimesbeen found to increase self-reward, to lead to helping others,and to be associated with compliance with a request fromothers (Carlsmith &Gross, 1969;Cialdini et al, 1973; Cialdini&Kenrick, 1976; Donnerstein, Donnerstein, &Munger, 1975;Isen et al., 1973; McMillen, 1971;D. T. Regan, Williams, &Sparling, 1972; J. W Regan, 1971;see Mayer&Salovey, 1988).These effects appear to be due to an interest in improvingaffec-tive state and dispelling the negative mood. Isen (1984) andClark and Isen (1982) reviewed the numerous folk strategiesthat peoplehave for workingthemselvesoutofbad moods, suchas"whistlingpast the graveyard," "whistling a happy tune," and"remembering favorite things" (Rodgers & Hammerstein,1959). Studies involving the direct manipulation of cognitionsshow that negative mood isoften successfully alleviated bysuchstrategies (Hale &Strickland, 1976; Kleck et al., 1976;Laird,1974; Raps, Reinhard, &Seligman, 1980;Schneider, Hastorf,&Ellsworth, 1980; Strickland, Hale, &Anderson,1975;Teasdale& Bancroft, 1977). In fact, it isoften sodifficult tokeep subjectsina bad mood once it has been induced that affect researchershave often resorted to comparing positive and neutral moodsubjects, in part because the logistics of so doing are less com-plicated (see Worth & Mackie, 1987, for a discussion of thisissue; cf. Isen, 1984)." A perhaps gratuitous but nonethelessnoteworthy observation is that no parallel trend has been foundfor those in apositive mood to try to work themselvesout of it.

Negative Information and the SelfNegative feedback, failure experiences, and rejection are

among the most powerful negative events people experience.There issubstantial evidence from socialpsychological investi-gations that people actively attempt to keep the implications of

these potential threats to self-esteem asnarrow and as neutralas possible.

Most people hold positive self-conceptions about most oftheir attributes (see Taylor&Brown, 1988,for a review).Whenpeople encounter ambiguous information, they tend to inter-pret it in linewith their prior beliefs. Thus, information that isneither clearly positive nor negative is more likely to be inter-preted positively than negatively.Inparticular,ambiguous feed-back from others may be perceived as more favorable than itreally is (Jacobs, Berscheid, & Walster, 1971; see Taylor &Brown, 1988,for areview).Aparallel point isthat peoplescruti-nize inconsistent feedback more closely than consistent feed-back. Because self-conceptions are generally positive, negativeinformation from an evahiator is more likely to be scrutinizedintermsoftheevaluator'smotivesandcredibility, withthe likeli-hood that it mayalsobediscounted(Halperin, Snyder,Shenkel,&Houston, 1976;Shavit &Shouval,1980; Shrauger, 1982).Neg-ativefeedbackisalsoseen as less credible than positive feedback(C. R. Snyder, Shenkel, & Lowery, 1977), especially by peoplewith high self-esteem (Shrauger&Kelley, 1988; Shrauger& Ro-senberg, 1970; seeShrauger, 1975, for a review).'Forsome situations, negativeinformation cannot be so easilydismissed. Forexample, if a negative attribute is a physical onethat the person carries around (e.g., obesity) or the negative at-tribute figures prominently into many situations (e.g, shyness),total avoidanceis an impractical solution. Under these circum-stances, a person may develop a negative self-schema. A self-schema is a knowledge structure that summarizes informationabout the self in a particular domain and facilitates the process-ing of information about the self in that domain. A negativeself-schema may enable a person to label and cordon offan areaof weaknesssothat itneed not permeate allaspects of identity(Wurf & Markus, 1983). The fact that schema-relevant situa-tions can be easily identified maymake itpossible for an indi-vidual to anticipate, prepare for, and avoid as much as possiblesituations in which he or she would be at a disadvantage (Wurf&Markus, 1983). Crises or traumas that cannot beavoidedmaybe minimized by efforts to find meaning or purpose in theevents (Taylor, 1983; Taylor, Collins, Skokan, &Aspinwall,1989).

In summary, then, when people respond tonegative informa-tion or events that challenge their generally positive concep-tions of themselves,they may try to reinterpret, distort,or min-imize the information so as to make it at least neutral and

8 Frijda (1988) argued for a law of the lightest load, a tendency toview things in the least negative light, thereby minimizing negativeemotional load. Correspondingly, heoffered a lawof the greatest gain,which leads to viewing situations so as to maximizeemotional gain.These arguments are consistent with the evidence just reviewed andmaybeespeciallyevidentwhen information about the self is involved.

9 It should benoted that people whohold negative self-conceptionstend toshowa reverse pattern, perceiving negative information abouttheir negative qualities asmore valid and even seeking out such feed-back under certain circumstances(seeSwann,1983, fora review).How-ever, even among those with many negative self-conceptions, whengiven a choice regarding what information they would liketosee, theychoosepositive information about their positivequalities(Swann, Pel-ham, & Krull, 1989).


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THE MOBILIZATION-MINIMIZATION HYPOTHESIS 75perhaps even positive. If such strategies fail, the individualmayincorporate the feedback into the self-concept, but in a way thatkeeps that damaging information as contained from the re-mainder of the positive self-concept aspossible. In so doing, theindividual mayminimize the associative links in memoryanduse the self-knowledge as a basis for selectively avoiding situa-tions that would likely reelicit the negative information.

Social Minimization of Negative EventsEvidence that people attempt to undo socially the impact of

negative events is manifold. Some of these strategies are di-rected primarily toward impression management designed tominimizethe damage to one's image in the eyesof other people.Other compensatory strategies aredesigned tooffset or recom-pense the social environment for whatevercostsitincurred dur-ing the processof providingsocial support or aid to the personundergoing the stressful event.

People attempt actively to control the interpretation of thenegative events in which they have been involved. Followingconditions when one hasappeared to be weak or to have failed,socialstrategies may be initiated to try to manage orundo thepoor impression on others that has been created. People aremore likely toseek helpwhen theycan attribute their problemto a difficult situation rather than to a personal deficiency(Fisher, Nadler, & Whitcher-Alagna, 1982; Tessler &Schwartz,1972), and they attempt to ensure that others also perceive thatthe situation is responsible for the need for help. Confiningone's neediness to a limited time period ("I'm all right now"),excuse-making for needing others' help (C. R. Snyder &Hig-gins, 1988), and other effortsat face-savingbehavioroften occurwhen people believe they have been seen by others at a disad-vantage. Another common strategy is to do something incon-sistent, that is either to engage in some positive outcome or tohighlight prior positive outcomes, suchasprevious instances ofsuccess (M. L.Snyder&Wickhind, 1981).One mayalso musterevidence, such as consensus information, to indicate that theadverse event wouldhave had similareffects on anyone,sothatothers will discount the roleof one's uniqueweakness or inabil-ity at having brought about the negative event. People some-times begin such strategies inadvanceof expectations of failureor other negativeevents. For example, when people expect tofail in front of others, they will often exaggerate the impedi-ments they will face toprovide an advance explanation of theirfailure (Wortman, Costanzo, &Witt, 1973).

Just as people engage in attributional searches that will ex-plain away negative events to themselves, they do the same inrepresenting their adverse experiences to others. Failure, forexample, may be attributed to low effort or the person mayactually engage in low effort to ensure effort-related failure(Baumeister&Scher,1988). Attributions may be made to short-term and unstable factors, such as loss of sleep (Darlcy &Goethals, 1980).People also engage inself-handicapping strate-gies that enable them to control the negative impressions heldby others by attributing their faults or adverse outcomes to fac-tors other than lowability Jonesand Berglas (1978) suggested,for example, that the excessive or continual use of alcohol ordrugs may be motivated by a need to havea social excuse forfailure. If one can induce others to attribute failure to one's

being stoned or drunk, it is less threatening in one's own eyesand the eyes of others than is attributing failure to incompe-tence (Kolditz& Arkin, 1982;seeBaumeister&Scher, 1988, fora review). Thus, in a variety of ways, people attempt to mini-mize the impact on the social environment ofnegative events inwhich theyhave been involved.

As noted earlier, negative eventsoften lead people to initiatesocial activity that they might otherwise not. Inaddition, nega-tive events can produce aneed forhelp or solace. To the extentthat an event has prompted such extractions of aid and supportfrom the social environment., an individual mayfeel a need torecompense the environment to offset the impact of the nega-tiveevent. Numerous studies from equity theory show that peo-ple whohave been overbenefittedthat is, received more fromothers than theyhave been able togivebackwillact to restoreequity when they can (Berscheid & Walster, 1967; Schmitt &Marwell, 1972; Walster, Walster, & Berscheid, 1978; see alsoGergen, Ellsworth, Maslach, &Seipel, 1975; J. Greenberg &Cohen, 1982).The larger the favor, the more likely people are towant to reciprocate and to try to do so (Goranson &Berkowitz,1966; M. S. Greenberg&Frisch, 1972).10Similarly, research onhelping behavior suggests that when the exchange of help in arelationship goes largelyin one direction, itproduces feelingsofindebtedness and asense of an imbalanceofpower in the rela-tionship (Worchel, 1984). In fact, people areunwilling to askforhelp when they think they will be unable to repay the aid insome form (Fisher et at, 1982). In short, circumstances inwhich aperson hasreceived help from others createa conditionof inequity that can foster power imbalances and negative feel-ings on the part of the recipient. When accepting help impliesthat one is incompetent, unsuccessful, and dependent, receiv-ing aid from others threatens self-esteem (Fisher et al., 1982).Acceptingaidfrom others can also limit personal freedom anddiminish a sense of personal power (Fisher et al, 1982), whichmay explainwhy, following a need forhelpor aid, people workto undo the feelings of indebtedness they feel theyhavecreatedin the social environment.

What, then, is the evidence concerning the social minimiza-tion of negative and positive events? There are no studies thatdirectly compare social and behavioral minimization in re-sponse to equivalent negative and positive events. There is am-pleevidence that people attempt to minimize socially the impli-cations of their negative behaviors, however.It seems unlikelythat evidence for the reverse proposition couldeasily be found.Why would people attempt to compensate for their positivebehaviors byengaginginnegativeones?The likelihood ofbeingable to find a social and behavioral minimization processamong people following positive events seems very low, al-though as noted, the evidence directly comparing positive andnegative events in this case isabsent.

10The exception to this generalization is in close relationships de-nned ascommunal (Clark & Mills, 1979), in which equity restorationnot only is unanticipated, but would threatenthe basisof the relation-shipif itoccurred. Beyond thecircleof communal intimates, however,peopleclearly do try to undo or reverse theeffects of taxing the socialnetwork.


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76 SHELLEY E. TAYLORDenying the Existence of a Negative Event

Perhaps the most dramatic instance of the organism's at-tempts tomuteor erase the impact of a negative event isdenial(Kubler-Ross, 1969; Lazarus, 1983). In response to intolerableanxiety and mental pain, the human being will, under certaincircumstances, obliterate the memory of a negative experiencealtogether. Denial appears toarise toreduce the intense load anegative event creates for physiological, cognitive, and emo-tional resources. Following a threatening event, it may serve abenign function, enabling a person to get through the event(e.g,surgery in response to a malignant tumor or the aftermath ofsudden bereavement) until the initial shock of the event hasdiminished somewhat (Lazarus, 1983). In rare cases, individ-uals never let go of their denial and maintain throughout theirlives that the negative event never took place. For example, acancer patient may maintain for years that he once had minorsurgery fora cyst, refusing toacknowledge that itwas, infact, amalignant tumor.

Potential Theoretical Accounts for the NegativeAsymmetry EffectThe previous twosectionsreviewed evidence suggesting that

organisms, including humans, respond to negative eventswithshort-term mobilization and long-term minimization. Thispattern is diagramatically represented in Figure1.Although theevidence is not complete forcertain categories of responses andthere are some exceptions to the pattern in other responseclasses, generally speaking the mobilization-minimization pat-tern is evident forphysiological, affective, cognitive, andsocial-behavioral classes of responses. The task of this section is howbest to explain this pattern.

An immediate dilemma that arises inattempting todevelopa theoretical account concerns the fact that psychologicaltheory generally does not offer predictions and explanationsthat cut across different classes of responses. Rather, theorytends to be more locally concerned with explanatory mecha-nisms within a given response class. Physiological theories ex-plain physiological events, social theories explain socialevents,and soforth. Nor isthisfact an arbitrary attribute of psychologi-cal theory.Rather, it would appear to result largelyfrom intrin-

Magnitudeof

Response

PositiveEventsNegativeEvents

TimeFigure I. The mobilization-minimization hypothesis.

sicconstraints on viable explanation imposed by the features ofthe response class. Forexample, physiological reactions tonega-tiveevents may occur over several minutes, whereassocial reac-tions may occur over weeks or even months. In this example,temporal factors would constitute an obstacle todeveloping aviable explanation that cuts across response classes.

Does this mean that theoretical explanations for the mobili-zation-minimization pattern must be sought within each cate-gory of responding? Certainly such theoretical accounts areavailable. Various explanations for the pattern have alreadybeen offered within response classes, most dealing with eitherthe mobilization phase or the minimization phase, but notboth. For example, the section on memory addressed the po-tential of associationistic models of memory to explain the factthat positive information and events are somewhat better re-called than negative information and events.Similarly, the sec-tion on the weighting of valenced information in judgmentsconsidered cue diagnosticity as a theoretical account of posttiv-ityand negativityeffects in inference tasks (Skowronski&Carl-ston, 1989). The mobilization-minimization pattern may nothave to be relegated to acollection of local, responseclass-spe-cificexplanations, however.Inthissection, I firstdescribesomegeneral theoretical models that have the potential to addressbroader aspects of the mobilization-minimization pattern. Ithen consider a general mechanism for howframeworks han-dling different aspects of the mobilization-minimization pat-tern may be linked toeach other.

Opponent-Process TheoryOpponent-process theory (Solomon &Corbit, 1974) poten-

tially providesa theoretical account of certain aspects of reac-tions to negative events. Solomon and Corbit maintained thatthere are centers in the brain whose function it is to reduce orsuppress all departures from hedonic neutrality. As such, theyargued that emotional states are automatically "opposed"byoffsetting responses that reduce the intensity of the originalemotional experience. These processes are assumed to be fun-damentally hedonic in nature and automatically evoked as aresponse to the reaction initiatedas aresultof the original stim-ulus conditions. The offsetting response is sluggish; recruitedslowly in response to the initial, more dramatic hedonic depar-ture; and dies out slowly over time.

Opponent-process theory provides a theoretical context forsome aspects of the minimization phase observed in responseto negative events. In particular, it helps explain the opposingemotional reactions, such as feelings of relief, relaxation, orexhilaration after exposure to threatening conditions. As such,it may handle physiological and affective responses tonegativeevents. Other features of the reactions to negative events, how-ever, do not fit the assumptions of opponent-process theorywell.For example, manyof the processes that people engage infollowing negative events are controlled and deliberate ones,including self-consciously undertaken efforts to ameliorate abad mood, such as helping others or thinking happy thoughts.These kinds of actions do not fit the automatic character of anopponent process. The opponent process is also argued to behedonic in nature, affectively opposite to that initially evoked inresponse to the stimulus condition. \fet many of the strategies


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that people engage in to blunt a negative event are affectivelyneutral; they are designed to offset the adverse effects of thenegative event but are not in themselves affectively valenced.Opponent-process theoryalsoprovidesan account of reactionsto both positive and negative events and, in and of itself, doesnot provide an explanation for whynegative events should beminimized more than positive events.

In short, then, opponent-process theory seems toapply bestto the positive emotional rush that is often experienced afterintense feelings of threat or fear have subsided. It does not,however,provide anaccount of the nonhedonic controlled pro-cesses such as mood repair or complex and deliberate inferen-tial strategies that may be initiated in response to negativeevents. It also does not provide an account of the mobilizationphase or respondingtonegative events,nor does ftmake differ-ential predictions for positive versus negative effects. It does,however, suggest acentral nervous system mechanism thatmayaccount for at least some of the physiological and emotionalresponses observed in the minimization reaction tonegativeevents.

Range-Frequency ExplanationsRange-frequency theories offer a potential account for some

aspectsof the mobilization-minimization pattern. Accordingto the range-frequency explanation (Kanouse &Hanson, 1972;Parducci, 1968), the psychological neutral point of a distribu-tionof objects isslightly positive. According to the theory, mostthings that happen in life are neutral to mildly positive. That is,outcomes are positively skewed, with mildly positive eventsmost likely and extremely positive events unlikely (Kanouse&Hanson, 1972; Parducci, 1963, 1965, 1968). People generallyperceive the majority of their outcomes to be good (Kanouse &Hanson, 1972); they perceive other people positively (Sears,1983; Sears & Whitney, 1972); they expect more positive thannegative relationships (DeSoto & Kuethe, 1959); they usemorepositive thannegative words (Zajonc, 1980);and their expecta-tions for the future and reports of happiness tend to be positive(Bradburn &Caplovitz, 1965; Cantril, 1965; Freedman,1978;see Peelers &Czapinski, 1990).

This perspective may account for several aspects of the nega-tive asymmetryeffect. First, it may be that negative events ini-tially drawoff disproportionate resources because they are un-expected or surprising, thus necessitating more consideration(Fiske, 1980). Novel stimuli, for example, are known to elicitattention and prompt exploration (Taylor & Fiske, 1978). Be-cause negativityand unexpectedness are confounded inreal life(e.g., Parducci, 1963,1965,1968), these predictionscan alsobederived from expectancy-contrast theories, which maintainthat negative events have disproportionately strong effects be-cause they are unexpected and contrast with the more usualstimuli that an individual encounters (Helson, 1964; Sherif &Sherif, 1967;cf. Skowronski &Carlston, 1989).

Doubt is cast on this class of explanations by the severalempirical examples in previous sections in which negativityandunexpectedness were unconfounded. Theeffectsofnegativ-ity typicallyremained intact.Thus, although negativityand un-expectedness are typically correlated and although they maysometimes evoke similar patterns of physiological, cognitive,

emotional, and social resources, the effects of negativity maynot be explained by infrequency and unexpectedness (cf.Skowronski &Carlston, 1989); indeed, at least in some condi-tions, the reverse may be true (e.g., Bohner et at, 1988).

Merely because variables can be disentangled experimen-tally, however, does not necessarily mean that they can be dis-entangled phenomenologically.People may continue to makeuseof acorrelation they perceive in the world under conditionsin which the correlation fails to exist, either because they do notperceive the disentanglement or because a strategy that buildsin the correlation iswell-practiced andspontaneously but inap-propriately used (cf. Funder, 1987; McArthur&Baron, 1983).Negative information may stand out and be disproportionatelyweighted in judgments, regardless of the characteristics of theparticular stimulus set to which one is responding.

This argument applies best to the judgment literature in ex-plaining why negative information may receive more weightthan positive information. However, the argument cannot beapplied to the positivfty biases identified by Skowronski andCarlston (1987;see Skowronski &Carlston, 1989, for a fullerdiscussion of the inconsistencies in the expectancy-contrast po-sition). It isalsounclear whyit should apply to the physiological,emotional, and socialpatterns of responding tonegative events.Moreover, it provides little perspective on the minimizationphase, namely the muting of the impact of negativeevents thatfollows. Nonetheless, range-frequency and expectancy-contrasttheories are useful for identifying one of the mechanismswhereby the mobilization phase of responding to negativeevents may occur. In particular, because negative information isunexpected and contrasts sharply with the customarystateofthe environment, it may alert an organism to the need to takepreparatory action and thus function as a cue, at least undersome circumstances, for initiating physiological, affective, cog-nitive, and behavioral mobilization.

The range-frequency account also predicts certain aspects ofthe minimization of negative events. It maintains that peopleavoid negative events more than they approach positive eventsbecause satisfaction is maximized by maximizing the propor-tion of nonnegativeoutcomes.Kanouse and Hanson (1972), forexample, arguedthatbecause themajority ofoutcomes are eval-uated as positive, any extreme positive outcome has the effect ofmoving the rangeof outcomeson the positive sideand the neu-tral point in a positive direction. This effect, in turn, shiftsoutcomes previously labeled as positive into a negative zone.Thus, for example, a passionate love affair may diminish theenjoyment of more mundane activities previously experiencedas enjoyable. This hidden drawback to positive outcomes,namely that they may decrease the enjoyment of intermediateoutcomes, may lead people to avoid negative outcomes ratherthan to approach positive ones because the pursuit of positiveoutcomes isperceived to be illusory. Maximizing the propor-tion of nonnegativeoutcomes may be achieved byavoiding neg-ative outcomes, but not by maximizing the positivity of out-comes.

This explanation provides a better description of the effectsof positive and negative events than it does of the processesunderlying the responses to positive and negative events. Thatis, the range-frequencyaccount in and of itself provides nopro-


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cess model orpsychological mechanismsforunderstanding theasymmetric impact of negative events.

Evolutionary ArgumentsEvolutionary arguments provide a potential account of cer-

tain aspects of the negative asymmetry effect, especially themobilization phase. Clearly, it is adaptive to respond quicklyand fully to adverse or threatening events (cf.Peelers &Cza-pinski, 1990): Survival maydependon it. It isless easyto struc-ture an evolutionary argument for the damping-down or era-sure of negative events. One could makea case for the need toreplenish certain resources, such as physiological reserves, butthis does not account well for effects in long-term memory, forexample, or for the face-savingsocial behaviors that mayaccom-pany the aftermath of a negative event. Moreover, one is leftwith anapparentgap in the argument:Therelative inaccessibil-ityofnegativeeventsinmemory would seemtocreateanevolu-tionary lacuna in the form of an inability to learn from pastmistakes. That is, ifnegativeevents evoke a pallid or inaccessi-ble representation, whether for cognitive or motivational rea-sons, the lessons to be learned from them may fail to have asubstantial impact on behavior when an individual is exposedto subsequent similar negative events. How can this be adap-tive?

There are at least twopossible rejoinders to this puzzle. Thefirstargues that the lacuna is compensated for by the fact thataffect appears to act as acontent-free memory code. It may bethat affect functions as a second retrieval route that increasesthe likelihood that affectively similar material will be recalledwhen a negative event is encountered. Thus, the pallid orskimpycontent-based associations that limit ease of retrieval ofsimilar negative information from memory may be offset bythe secondaffective retrieval route. Doubt iscast on this expla-nation, however, by the fact that although positive affect ap-pears to act as aneffective retrieval cue for positive information,negative affect is not as effective a retrieval cue for negativeinformation (e.g., Isen et al, 1978). Thus, not only are the con-tent-based associations among negative material somewhat im-poverished relative to positive material inmemory, the ability ofnegativeaffect itself to function as a retrieval cueappears to beimpaired relativeto positive affect (Isen, 1984).

A second possibility suggests that the lacuna does exist, butthat its existence may not be a problem. People are both data-driven and theory-driven in their processing (Fiske& Neuberg,1990; Fiske&Taylor, 1991). It may be that negative events arebest handled in a data-driven manner, in which the organismresponds to the situation at hand. The process of retrievingsimilar events and using them as quasi-appropriate models foracurrent situation may be somewhat more error-prone than theorganism can afford, especially if the negative event comes inthe form of an emergency.This explanation isconjectural andwould require convincing evidencethat negativeevents promptdata-driven processing rather than theory-driven processingand that they do so to a greater degree than do positive events.

Research does not currently provide a basis for distinguish-ing among these possibilities. There may indeed be a gap cre-ated by the asymmetrical processing of negative events in theform of insufficient learning from the past; or the gap may be

compensated for by an affective retrieval route;or the gap maynot matter because negative eventsmaybest lend themselvestodata-driven processing. Other explanations may also be possi-ble. Thus, derivationsfrom evolutionary theory handle themo-bilization phase of the negative asymmetry effect well, but donot provide a coherent account of the minimization phase.

Negative Events, Positive Illusions, and Wett-BeingBuilding on evolutionary arguments, Taylor and Brown's

(1988)workon positive illusionsalsoprovides a potential theo-reticalcontext forcertain aspectsof theasymmetrical impactofnegativeevents. Taylor and Brown began with the observationthat normal human thought is skewed in a positive directionand characterized by at least three positive biases: an overlypositive conception of the self, an exaggerated perception ofpersonal control, and an unrealistic optimism about the future.They documented that these biases hold for the majority ofpeopleacross a wide array of situations and that they guide theprocessingof information, such that mildly negativeorambigu-ous information isdistorted to be more positive than may actu-ally be the case. Although these biases lead people to holdoverly optimistic perceptions that are not, strictly speaking,true, Taylor and Brown argued that they areadaptive becausethey promote the attributes usually consideredcharacteristicofmentalhealth: positive emotional well-being, theability toformsocial bonds, thecapacity forproductiveand creativework, theability todeal withstresseffectively, and theabilitytogrowandchange as a person (Taylor, 1989;Taylor&Brown, 1988).

Taylor and Brown's(1988) analysisapplies best to the mini-mization phase, suggesting why the minimization of negativeinformation mayultimatelybe adaptive. Itdoesnot suggestanoverarching process model to explain minimization, but ratherit describes a variety of processing mechanisms that may ac-count forminimization withindifferent classes of responses. Italso does not directly address the mobilization phase of theimpact of negative events. A logical extension of Taylor andBrown's argument,however, could encompass the mobilizationphase. That is, one couldargue that to jolt the organism out ofitscustomarily positive, mildly self-deceptive state, astronganddramatic reaction to negative events across multiple classes ofresponses may be required. However, from the standpoint oflong-termadaptation, focusonnegative eventsand the resultingnegative mood state could be maladaptive for the organism.The long-termresidueof negativeeventsis dysphoria, includingdepression, whichisassociated with reducedsocialactivity, low-ered motivation, reducedcreativity, andanoverall reduced levelof well-being (seeTaylor, 1989, for a review).

Because negative events and their concomitant moods slowprocessing, theorganismismoved intoastateof conservatism,behaving cautiously with respect to new information, but notnecessarily efficiently What this means is that the organismexperiencing the aftermath of negative events is less able tomove large volumes of information through consciousness, atask that is more easily handled by the cognitive heuristics andother processing mechanisms associated with positive mood.There is emerging evidence to suggest that in the long termdysphoric mood may also be associated with a variety of ad-verse health outcomes (e.g., Friedman &Booth-Kewley, 1988).


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Thus, a strong rapid response to negative events, coupledwith a strong and rapid diminution of the impact of thoseevents, may be mosteffective for the organism inboth the shortterm and the long term. The initial response may enable theorganism to overcome positively biased thought processes todeal effectively with the emergency, whereasthe mutingof theimpact of the negativeeventmay beessential for the restorationof positive biases that appear to facilitate effective functioningin nonthreateningenvironments.

Taylor and Brown's (1988) argument isbetter suited for un-derstanding the minimization phase than the mobilizationphase, for which additional assumptionsare needed. It also ap-plies better to the judgment,memory, and behavioraleffects ofnegative information than to physiological responses. As such,it too may have applicability to onlycertainaspectsof the nega-tive asymmetryeffect."

Theoretical Mechanisms: A Family of Linked Models?As just noted, there is no single theoretical mechanism that

appearstoexplain both the mobilization responseand themin-imization response to negative events. Moreover, the likelihoodof uncovering such a mechanism would appear to be low.Al-though the patterns of responding to positive and negativeevents across physiological, emotional, cognitive, and social re-sponse classes appear to be similar, theywould seemof neces-sity to be disparately caused, in that they are neither simulta-neous nor necessarilyin phase. Thus, a family of theoreticalmechanisms and process models, specific to particular classesof responses, may be required to explain the multiple changesobserved in response to negative events. Nonetheless, the paral-lelisms observed across different patterns of responses suggestthe presence of some integration among thesedifferent processmodels.

How might such linkingwork? The most likely method bywhich such integration could be achieved would seemtobe thatthe output of one process would act as input for another one.For example, the physiological arousal associatedwithnegativeevents may act as one source of input that leads people to seekcausal explanations for anevent.Similarly, the relative inabilityto access negatively toned information in memory could easilyact as input for the shift to slow,controlled,complex inferentialstrategies among those experiencing a negative mood or event.As a third example,the disproportionate attention engagedbynegative events could account, in part, for their disproportion-ate weighting in judgment tasks.

On the whole, it is most plausible that the lower-level pro-cesses (such as the arousal and attention produced by negativeevents) initiate the higher-level responses (such as social reac-tions) to negative events, inasmuchas the lower-level processesoccur more rapidly Thus, the more macro-levelprocessessuchas judgment formation, causal attribution, or social responsesto negative events may be evoked in response not only to thevalence of a negative event, but to other lower-level processeswith which negative events are customarily associated, suchasenhanced arousal or increased and focusedattention. The re-verse direction of instigation is also possible, however. Socialresponses to negative events may lead people to focus on andbecome aroused by an event more than would have been the

case if no social response had occurred. Indeed, the social envi-ronment can sometimes label as negative an event that wouldotherwise be experienced as neutral.

Thus, a full understanding of the mobilization-minimiza-tion pattern of responding to negative events may require anintegrated consideration of different levelsof theory. As I haveshown, certain theoretical mechanisms apply in limited do-mains, whereas others, such as opponent-process theory, range-frequency explanations, evolutionary arguments, or Taylor andBrown's (1988)workon cognitiveillusions,provide broader ex-planations that may apply to several classes of responses withinor across different phases in reactions to negative versus posi-tive events. Different outputsof the mobilizationorminimiza-tion pattern, such as enhanced arousal or differential attention,may function as cues that themselves initiate otheraspectsofthe mobilization-minimization response. Thissuggested link-ageprovides apotential mechanism for integratingthesediffer-ent process models in a concerted pattern of parallel but dispa-rately caused activity.

ImplicationsIn recent years, research on affect, emotions, and self-regula-

tion has focused on the different origins and functions of posi-tive and negative affect. A pattern of asymmetrical effects hasgraduallyemergedbut has not yet beensystematically orexplic-itly addressed in the literature. This article affords such a per-spectiveand attempts to identity someof the theoretical mecha-nisms whereby these commonalities in asymmetrical effectsoccur. In this section, I address some of the further implicationsof these patterns.

A first issue concerns whether the judgments prompted bynegative events or under conditions of negative mood are morevariable than those made under neutral or positive conditions.Controlled and careful processing would seem to leave moreroom for individual differences to operate than wouldbe trueof the rapid and efficient heuristic processing associated withpositive mood. A point of support for this conjecture is pro-vided by an asymmetry in the propensity for negative but notpositive events to potentiate self-esteemdifferences. Consider-able research suggests that although high and low self-esteemindividuals explain success experiences in similar ways, highand low self-esteem individuals diverge intheir explanationsforfailure (cf. Pietromonaco & Markus, 1985; see Campbell &Fairey, 1985,fora review;seealso Zuckerman, 1979).'2Similareffects have been observed in the social comparison literature,

1' Acombinationofevolutionary argumentsand Taylor and Brown's(1988) perspective (which derives from evolutionary arguments)pro-vides an overarching framework forunderstanding the negative asym-metry pattern. However, thisintegration achieves more of a contextforunderstanding the pattern than a theoretical mechanism for under-standing exactly how it occurs. Consequently, a family oflinked pro-cess models appears best to handle the parallel but local changeswithin different responsecategories.

11People with lowself-esteem are more likely to explain negativeeventswithreference to stable, internalqualities, whereaspeoplehighin self-esteem ate more likely toattributenegative events toexternal,unstable (actors.


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with threatening comparisons evokingself-esteem differences,but enhancing comparisons notevokingself-esteem differences(Buunk, Collins, Taylor, van Yperen, & Dakof, 1989). Thus,potential variability in judgments regarding positive versus neg-ative events requires some consideration.

By focusing largely on negative events, rather than internalstates, I have largely sidestepped the issueof different negativeaffective states. But this point merits attention. It has been ar-gued that whereas positive affect tends to be undifferentiated,negative affect has several qualitativelydistinct manifestations(seeFiske&Taylor, 1991). Higgins(1987)suggested the need todifferentiate dejection-related negative states from agitation-re-lated negative states. Building on this distinction, Schwarz(1988) argued that agitationisassociated withadesire toavoidall negative outcomes that should require more complex cogni-tiveactivity than dejection-related states, which produce only aneed to find something positive to alleviate the mood. In appar-ent contradiction, other work has suggested that agitation-re-lated negative states are characterized by a narrowingand fo-cusingof attentionand the use of fewer cues that aredominantor salient (e.g., Broadbent, 1971;Easterbrook, 1959; ysenck,1976):Slow, deliberate, complex strategieshavebeen more con-sistently associated with dejection-related states (Isen, 1984).These points suggest that different negativeaffective states(e.g,agitation vs.dejection) may produce complexities not yet fullyaddressed byresearch that mayultimatelyhave implicationsforthis analysis."

This analysis suggests several important implications aboutnegative events. A first insight concerns the fact that negativeevents seem to serve a generalized danger-signal function forthe organism, producing arousal accompanied by a controlledand cautious conservatism. These effects appear to extendbeyond the boundaries of the specific threatening or harmfulevent.For example, the impact of negativemood on processingstrategies extends beyond information associated with the par-ticular negative event. As Johnson and Tversky (1983)noted, anegative mood increases subjective estimates of threats anddangers of all kinds, not merely those that areassociated withthe event that gave rise to the negative mood (cf. Schwarz, 1990;Schwarz & Strack, in press).14 An evolutionary argument (cf.Tiger,1979)might maintain that a threatened or harmed organ-ismis in a psychologically orphysicallyweakened state and thatthe generalized danger-signal function of a negative event isfunctional because it keeps the organism appropriatelycautious and timid until its resources are replenished. The gen-eralization aspects of responses associated with negative versuspositive events clearly merit additional study.

This analysis also implies that extended energies are taken upin the management of negative information and events and thatin certain respects, positive events and information may takecare of themselves. Negative events seemto be where muchofthe physiological, affective, cognitive, and social action is. Thispoint underscores the emerging insight in the affect literature;namely, that positive and negative affect cannot be consideredendpoints of asingle continuum, but rather mustbethought ofasqualitativelydistinct phenomena (e.g, Berscheid, 1983; Isen,1984).

Finally, an understanding of the exceptions to the mobiliza-tion-minimization pattern of responses to negative events

wouldbeauseful direction for future work. Occasionally, ratherthan being minimized on the long term, a negative event maybe seen as pivotal or symbolic in a person^ life. An ignominiousdismissal by an employer may function as a moralistic lessonfor the future, or a family's personal history may beorganizedaround the death of a particular family member. The condi-tionsunderwhichpeople cannot orchoosenot to minimize thelong-term implications of a negative event merit study. Simi-larly, certainpeople such as the chronically depressed and thoselow in self-esteem seem unable to muster the strategies thatafford minimizations of negative events (seeTaylor, 1989, for areview). Explanation of these issues is warranted.

In summary, certain evidence concerning human and animalphysiology, emotions, memory, judgment, and social function-ing suggests that negative events initially mobilize and tax re-sources, but these same events are minimized shortly thereafter.This pattern appears to distinguish negativefrom neutral andpositive events at both the mobilization and minimizationphases. Several potential theoretical accounts for this patternhave been reviewed. No single account appears to explain allthe effects observed, although aspects of opponent-processtheory, range-frequency theories, evolutionary arguments, andTaylor and Brown's(1988)workon cognitive adaptation may allexplaincertain aspects of the mobilization-minimization pat-tern. It is concluded that a family of process models, encom-passing different classes of responses and linked to each otherbyway of their respective outputs, mayaccount forthese paral-lel but disparatdy caused effects.

13 In further support of the need to examine specific negative emo-tions, not just global mood, Schwarz and Clore (1988) summarizedstudies suggesting that specific emotions such as fear generalized torelatedcognitions, such as judgments of risk, but not to unrelatedcog-nitions, such as judgments of blame."Schwarz(1990)argued that such effects occur becausepeopleusetheir mood as a source of information for making judgments; the ef-

fects are not dependent on the retrieval of mood-congruent concepts.In essence, he maintained, reference to current mood functions as ajudgmentheuristic formaking evaluative judgments(Schwarz, Strack,Kommer, &Wagner, 1987; seealsoSchwarz &Clore, 1988).

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