Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: the negativity bias in evaluative categorizations.

@article{Ito1998NegativeIW,
  title={Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: the negativity bias in evaluative categorizations.},
  author={T A Ito and Jeff T. Larsen and N. Kyle Smith and John T. Cacioppo},
  journal={Journal of personality and social psychology},
  year={1998},
  volume={75 4},
  pages={
          887-900
        }
}
Negative information tends to influence evaluations more strongly than comparably extreme positive information. To test whether this negativity bias operates at the evaluative categorization stage, the authors recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs), which are more sensitive to the evaluative categorization than the response output stage, as participants viewed positive, negative, and neutral pictures. Results revealed larger amplitude late positive brain potentials during the evaluative… 
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