The Art of Manliness - #574： The Power of Bad — Overcoming the Negativity Effect

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.400 Have you ever been heaped with praise only to ignore it in favor of focusing on the lone

00:00:15.400 piece of criticism you received? That's the power that bad things wield and it's a power

00:00:19.060 that humans need to learn how to both harness and mitigate. My guest today lays out both

00:00:22.900 sides of that coin in his book that he co-authored with psychologist Roy Baumeister. His name

00:00:26.760 is John Tierney and the book is The Power of Bad, How the Negativity Effect Rules Us

00:00:30.600 and How We Can Rule It. We begin our conversation discussing how much stronger bad is than good

00:00:34.940 and how many good things it takes to offset a single bad one. We then dig into the implications

00:00:39.120 of the fact that bad things have a much stronger impact than good ones, including how you really

00:00:43.100 only need to be a good enough parent to your kids, the best way to deliver criticism to

00:00:46.680 others, and why religions that emphasize hell have historically won more adherence than those

00:00:50.900 that focus on heaven. We also talk about how negativity is contagious and why it's true

00:00:54.400 that one bad apple can spoil a whole bunch. We end our conversation with a look at whether

00:00:58.120 or not social media is a negative force in our lives and John's advice on how to not let

00:01:02.360 those he calls the merchants of bad and the media make us think that things in the world

00:01:06.260 are worse than they really are. Lots of insights in this show on both how to use the power of

00:01:10.020 bad to your advantage and overcome its negative effects. After the show's over, check out our show

00:01:13.720 notes at aom.is slash power of bad. All right, John Tierney, welcome to the show.

00:01:27.780 Thanks very much, Brett. Nice to be here.

00:01:29.680 So you have co-written a book called The Power of Bad, How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How

00:01:35.120 We Can Rule It. Your co-author is Roy F. Baumeister, who we've had him on the show before to discuss his

00:01:40.460 work on willpower. And also, he wrote a book about masculinity a while back ago.

00:01:44.880 Yeah, it's a great book.

00:01:45.760 It is, it is.

00:01:46.900 Yeah.

00:01:47.360 So this book is based on a paper that Roy did a couple years ago called Bad is Stronger Than Good.

00:01:52.920 Where did he get this hunch for this hypothesis that bad things are stronger than good things in our

00:01:59.280 brain, at least?

00:02:00.340 Roy had been thinking about this for a long time. In fact, his first inkling of this came along

00:02:06.700 decades earlier when he was a young guy in a relationship with a woman who, you know, he

00:02:11.840 had great times with her. She was wonderful in many ways, but she also had a real temper.

00:02:16.080 And so, you know, at times he was really madly in love with her. And other times he was despairing,

00:02:21.160 this is never going to work. And he didn't know what to do. So he fell back on the classic

00:02:26.560 stratagem of a social scientist. He started collecting data. And at the end of every day,

00:02:31.940 he would start, he would write down, was this a good day or a bad day? Am I, am I glad to be in

00:02:36.480 this relationship today? Or am I, or would I rather be out of it? And he wasn't sure what

00:02:41.400 he'd find. And he kind of thought, you know, I, I guess if there are at least four good days for

00:02:45.180 every bad day, then, you know, that would be good enough for me, but he wasn't sure. And if it was

00:02:50.340 one-to-one, you know, that, you know, that would be bad, you know, that I should get out of this.

00:02:54.900 So he did it for about six months and he found that after a while, the ratio remained steady. It was

00:03:00.380 like two good days for every bad day. And this was kind of right in between his range. He didn't

00:03:06.080 quite know what it meant, but so he didn't really reach any scientific reach. He just,

00:03:11.660 but in his gut, he got out of the relationship. And he just thought about this ratio, you know,

00:03:16.020 which is now known as the positivity ratio, which is a number of good things for every bad thing.

00:03:21.700 So he thought about this a little bit. And then, you know, in the eighties and nineties,

00:03:25.940 behavioral economists were doing experiments in loss aversion showing that people, you know,

00:03:30.940 cared much more about losing money than they did about gaining money. You know, that it hurt much

00:03:35.060 more to lose a dollar than it did, you know, than the joy of making a dollar. And there were some

00:03:39.880 other experiments. Some psychologists had found that, you know, that a bad first impression was

00:03:45.400 much easier to get than, than, than a good first impression. And it was also tougher to lose.

00:03:51.080 So he noticed a couple of these things and wondered, you know, I wonder why bad things are

00:03:54.480 stronger than good things there. So he and some colleagues looked into this and they thought,

00:03:59.320 uh, the way we'll do this is we'll try and find counter examples. Let's find some examples where

00:04:03.940 good things are stronger. And then we'll be able to figure out what it, you know, what exactly is it

00:04:08.020 that gives bad its greater power in some situations. And to their surprise, you know, you know,

00:04:14.180 they look through the literature and, you know, in psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics,

00:04:19.620 they just could not find counter examples. You know, bad was relentlessly strong. You know,

00:04:25.980 the bad parenting, you know, I made a big difference. Good parenting didn't really make

00:04:30.600 that much difference. Bad health made a big difference in your life. Good health didn't

00:04:34.220 make, you know, such a difference. You know, penalties, you know, a bad outcome motivated you

00:04:39.280 more than a reward, a good outcome. So they put all this together and then wrote this paper called

00:04:45.280 bad is stronger than good. And at the same time, another psychologist at the university of

00:04:49.580 Pennsylvania, uh, Paul Rosen, uh, he was working on this from a different angle and, and, but he'd

00:04:54.880 also noticed this, this same general pattern. And so this was something that it was this, you know,

00:05:00.240 really important phenomenon about life that bad is stronger than good, but it really hadn't been

00:05:06.140 noticed because it crossed into so many different fields. And, and so they were the first to put this

00:05:11.760 together. And since then, you know, it's not, it's now known as the negativity effect, also called

00:05:16.900 negativity bias. And it's been studied, you know, there've been hundreds of papers, you know, studying

00:05:22.700 this, confirming it, analyzing it, and, you know, figuring out what to do about it. So let's talk

00:05:27.220 about this ratio that Roy has found as well as other people have found in other domains. Uh, positive

00:05:32.200 psychologists have found this, economists have found this. So this kind of gives an idea of like

00:05:36.440 roughly, not exactly, but roughly how much stronger bad is. Well, there've been a bunch of

00:05:42.800 different studies that, you know, they've looked, you know, you know, other people have done what

00:05:45.800 Roy did. They, they've, you know, they've had people keep diaries and, um, every day and answer

00:05:50.620 questions every day. And they, and they classify the day as a good day or a bad day. And they find that,

00:05:56.540 you know, you know, that, that people tend to, you know, people who are doing, you know, who are

00:06:01.060 doing okay, tend to have three good days for every bad day. And, you know, behavioral economists have

00:06:05.800 done their own studies, you know, exactly how, you know, how many dollars do I have to offer you as

00:06:10.080 a reward, you know, to get you to risk, uh, losing $1. And, you know, the results range a little bit.

00:06:16.540 When you're talking about money, people can be more rational and, you know, they're sometimes,

00:06:20.700 you know, if you're offering $2, you know, they're willing to risk losing a dollar, which in itself

00:06:26.620 irrational, of course, but, but, but most cases they've also done studies of, you know, they track

00:06:32.260 workers' moods during the day and see how many good interactions they have, how many

00:06:35.680 bad interactions, what's the impact of each one. They've also tracked, you know, they've looked at

00:06:41.240 couples in the laboratory as they talk to each other and they measure the good things they say

00:06:46.340 and the bad things they say. And they actually, you know, measure their physical responses as

00:06:50.680 they're talking to each other. And so, and what the studies show generally is that it usually takes

00:06:57.680 three good things, you know, to have the impact of one bad thing. So we recommend the rule of four,

00:07:03.200 which is if you want to do better than that, you know, you know, try to do at least four good

00:07:06.960 things for every bad thing. So that, you know, that means that if you're late for one meeting,

00:07:11.640 you're not going to make up for it by, by showing up early the next time. You got to do more than

00:07:16.720 that. If you say, you know, one bad thing to someone, one hurtful thing, you know, plan on saying at least

00:07:22.800 four nice things to try and make up for that.

00:07:25.240 No, yeah. We've seen that. Uh, we've talked about, uh, relationships on the show, the five to one

00:07:29.000 that Gottman, John Gottman found, right? So it doesn't matter if arguments are going to kill

00:07:32.860 relationship, but you have to have five positive interactions with your partner to make up for

00:07:37.520 that. Right. They said five is, you know, that's kind of way above, you know, the norm. And, you

00:07:41.420 know, and, and, and, and I mean, the higher the positivity rates are generally the better. I mean,

00:07:45.440 there are in some studies, you know, when they've analyzed people's positive emotions and their

00:07:49.920 feelings, they found some people just have sky high. They, you know, they claim to have no negative

00:07:54.760 feelings. Everything's positive. And that's a bit deranged, you know, because they're, you know,

00:07:59.580 those people are a bit manic, but in general, you know, you know, four, you know, five is even

00:08:04.620 better than four. Usually, you know, that the higher the positivity ratio, generally the better

00:08:09.020 it is because, you know, bad is stronger than good, but good can prevail by basically swamping bad

00:08:15.260 with numbers. You overcome, you overwhelm it by force of numbers.

00:08:19.220 So why is bad stronger than good? Like, why do we have this negativity bias? I mean, we,

00:08:23.120 obviously we have it for a reason, right? It's adaptive, right? Our ancestors decided,

00:08:27.580 oh, this actually is good for you to like focus on the negative more than the positive.

00:08:31.320 So what's going on there?

00:08:32.500 Right. Yeah. I mean, you're exactly right about it being adaptive that on the ancient Savannah,

00:08:37.480 you know, the guys who sat around focusing on how great this berry tasted, you know, are not going

00:08:42.580 to do as well as the guys who are more alert for, you know, let's make sure it's not poisonous.

00:08:46.920 You know, let's watch out for that hungry lion out there, basically being alert because it takes only 0.53

00:08:51.300 one mistake to kill you. And so, you know, to pass on your genes, you know, the more vigilant you are,

00:08:56.900 the more attention you pay to bad things, the better chance that your genes will be passed on.

00:09:02.420 And so that, you know, therefore it's really important. It's not so important to savor the

00:09:06.340 great taste of a food, but it's really important to remember, you know, which foods are poisonous,

00:09:11.540 which ones will, will make you sick. So, you know, there's a real good adaptive reason for it.

00:09:17.240 And it's still useful. I mean, one mistake can still really hurt and one mistake can still be fatal.

00:09:22.540 One mistake can still, you know, ruin your career. I mean, one bad step can ruin your reputation.

00:09:28.080 So it is important. And there are real benefits to this negativity bias because it does protect you.

00:09:34.160 And also, but the other reason that, you know, the bad really, that this negativity bias evolved

00:09:38.920 is that it teaches you. It's the best way to, you know, to learn, that you learn more from failure

00:09:44.200 than from success. You know, when you succeed at something that goes great, but you don't learn

00:09:48.300 a lot because everything went well. You know, when you get a bad mark on a test, when you fail

00:09:53.180 something, it forces you to look at, you know, what went wrong? What did I do wrong? And to improve.

00:09:59.440 And because the pain of failure is so great, you know, the pain of bad is so great. It motivates

00:10:04.960 you to avoid that the next time. I don't want this to happen again. So there are real good reasons

00:10:10.000 why it's there. And, you know, and, and young people are especially susceptible to negativity

00:10:14.840 bias. And this makes evolutionary sense too, because when you're young, that's when you

00:10:19.200 really need to learn, you know, you've got to pay attention. You've got to look around

00:10:22.740 at the world, figure out what you're doing wrong. And so, you know, paying attention to

00:10:27.000 the mistakes and to the bad stuff makes a lot of sense in that age. You know, teenagers

00:10:30.800 are so, you know, so self-conscious, you know, they're, they're, they're figuring their

00:10:34.640 way in the world and they're very attuned to any sort of bad things that happens to

00:10:38.720 them, any bad reactions they get.

00:10:40.780 Well, you said that this negativity bias is still adaptive in our modern world, but in

00:10:44.060 any ways, is there any ways that it's sort of out of sync with our modern environment?

00:10:48.840 It is. And, and again, the analogy about, you know, back to the ancient Savannah, it was

00:10:53.280 adaptive back then, you know, when food was scarce to, you know, during lean times, you

00:10:57.680 should fatten up and eat as much as you can. So that was adaptive then, you know, but

00:11:01.740 when you're surrounded by junk food all day long, you know, that's tempting you all

00:11:05.460 day long, it's not so adaptive. And so we end up with, with this huge problem of

00:11:09.800 obesity and from people eating too much and eating the wrong kinds of food. And so

00:11:15.360 similarly today we are in a high bad environment. We are just surrounded by, by

00:11:21.100 people all day long, you know, on television, on our, on our, on our phones, on our

00:11:26.460 many screens, basically the merchants of bad, we call them. And they're, they're

00:11:31.600 trying to scare you because they know the easiest way to get your attention on the

00:11:35.480 screen is to, is to appeal to that, you know, to something is to scare you. There's a crisis

00:11:41.700 in the world. There's, you know, something, there's a danger to your life. Is your partner

00:11:46.520 cheating on you? Five signs are doing that. You know, these, these ads that pop up on

00:11:50.280 your screens. So we're surrounded by that all day long and the news media, you know, I've

00:11:55.240 been, I've been a journalist, you know, my whole adult life and I, and we're the worst

00:11:59.940 at it. And it's one of the reasons that I got into this because I, I was wondering

00:12:03.860 why do we constantly look for bad news and why do we hype to bad news so much? You

00:12:09.020 know, most trends are in the world are positive and yet we can take the most

00:12:13.540 positive trend and find one bad example and that's what we write about and it's a

00:12:18.180 crisis and, you know, and so we're out to scare people. So in this high bad

00:12:22.220 environment, we recommend going on a low bad diet that you basically need to curate, you

00:12:28.160 know, what you see and watch and, and what you focus on so that you don't get

00:12:32.420 this distorted view of the world. It's like, you know, don't gorge, you know, junk

00:12:35.800 food is fine and in moderation, but you don't want to gorge on it and you don't

00:12:40.140 want to gorge on bad either.

00:12:42.300 And so what the rest of the book talks about is looking at this, the power of bad,

00:12:45.820 this negativity effect on how we can use it, sort of harness it for our benefit, but

00:12:50.600 also how to mitigate the downsides. And in one area where you look at how you can

00:12:56.240 use the bad effect to improve your life are relationships. So how do negative

00:13:02.280 moments that we experience in our life, how do they affect relationships? And if

00:13:07.080 you want to improve a relationship, does it, does it help more to increase

00:13:09.720 positive experience or just eliminate the bad stuff?

00:13:12.720 Well, researchers have, you know, have analyzed this by tracking couples over a

00:13:17.520 long time. They'll, you know, they'll watch them when they, when they meet and then

00:13:20.300 see which relationships last and which ones don't, and they observe their

00:13:24.120 behavior at different times. And what these studies show is that it's the bad

00:13:28.700 stuff that matters, that it's, it's how you deal with negativity that matters, that

00:13:32.820 you know, the initial passion, you know, you know, how good you feel about it, you

00:13:37.060 know, that doesn't last and that's not enough to sustain a relationship. So, and the

00:13:43.400 couples that are able to avoid negativity, the best thing you can do is avoid

00:13:47.780 negativity by being sensitive to your partner and just watching out for things 0.99

00:13:51.620 that bother them, even if that seems stupid to you. And also, you have to guard about the 0.96

00:13:56.220 way that you look at your partner. You know, in relationships that last, people tend to

00:14:01.260 develop what researchers call positive illusions about their partner. They basically learned,

00:14:06.900 they trained themselves, or they've got some knack for this, for overlooking their

00:14:11.420 partner's flaws. They have this unrealistic view of their partner. And, and, and it's

00:14:16.180 really helpful in a relationship. And the nice thing is, is that after a while, the

00:14:19.600 partner at first doesn't really believe the same about themselves, but if they're, you

00:14:23.900 know, if their partner really believes it, they come to see it themselves. And so you

00:14:27.760 both feel better. There have been experiments, brain scanning experiments were

00:14:31.640 fascinating where they track couples that, and they looked at the ones that broke up and

00:14:36.000 the ones that stayed together. And when they, you know, went back and looked at, you

00:14:40.620 know, at their initial brain scans, when these people were first in love, they found

00:14:46.480 that the couples that stayed together, the big difference, and they weren't expecting

00:14:50.160 this, it was a surprise to them. They found that the couples that were destined

00:14:53.900 for success, the part of their brain that was, that's involved in making negative

00:14:59.900 judgment, they tamped down the activity in that part of the brain when, when they

00:15:04.140 were shown a photograph of their beloved. You know, they basically, their brains were

00:15:08.940 just shutting down that negative judgment when they looked at their partner. Now, I

00:15:13.640 mean, all of us said, that's not something you can just, you know, do, you know, you

00:15:17.540 can't tell your brain to shut down there, but you can make more conscious efforts not

00:15:21.740 to focus on your, on your partner's flaws and, and to basically learn to give them the

00:15:26.860 benefit of the doubt. One of the biggest mistakes people make, psychologists call it

00:15:30.720 the fundamental attribution error, is that, you know, if your partner shows up late for

00:15:36.100 dinner and they, and they tell you, well, I was, I got delayed at the office, the traffic

00:15:40.180 was bad. You can either attribute that to, well, yeah, there were just circumstances

00:15:44.460 beyond their control. They couldn't help it, you know, and that's why they're late.

00:15:48.500 But what we often tend to do is think, no, you know, they're selfish. They don't care

00:15:53.280 about me. They, you know, they don't mind keeping me waiting. They don't love me. And

00:15:57.840 you tend to attribute this one bad thing, this bad action, you attribute it to some

00:16:02.900 permanent character flaw. And that's, that's what's called the fundamental attribution error,

00:16:08.100 which is something that was actually caused by temporary external circumstances. We blame

00:16:13.800 on their character. So we see, you know, a driver run a stop sign and we think automatically

00:16:18.740 he's an awful driver. You know, whereas, you know, sometimes if we make that same mistake,

00:16:24.100 we go, well, I just didn't see the stop sign was blocked by a tree. So, and when couples have studied

00:16:30.560 people's attributional style, as they call it, they found that couples who tend to immediately say,

00:16:36.460 yeah, when something goes wrong, they say, yeah, that's just the way he is. Just typical.

00:16:40.760 They do that. You know, this is what drives me crazy about them. That the couples that do that

00:16:45.100 are much more likely to break up. And the ones who were more likely to give their partner the benefit

00:16:49.860 of the doubt to think, yeah, it was, you know, traffic was probably bad or it was just an unusually

00:16:54.500 bad day at the office. I'm not going to blame them for it. And then, you know, the other thing is when

00:16:59.160 something goes wrong, when they, you know, say something that bothers you, when they do something,

00:17:03.560 we love the advice that Ruth Bader Ginsburg got from her mother-in-law on her wedding day.

00:17:08.860 The mother-in-law told her in every marriage, it sometimes helps to be a little deaf. You know,

00:17:14.220 that basically being able to, you know, to ignore something bad that happened instead of getting

00:17:19.940 angry and retaliating, that just goes a long way in reducing the negativity in a marriage. 0.87

00:17:26.100 And now there's some things that you do have to respond to. I mean,

00:17:29.700 you shouldn't be a doormat and let your partner run all over you. But if you do respond, you know,

00:17:35.780 it's really important to stay calm and don't retaliate, you know, don't sulk, you know,

00:17:41.120 don't angrily retaliate, you know, don't accuse them of, you know, of being a bad person or make

00:17:48.020 accusations. Just explain calmly why something bothers you and don't escalate the conflict.

00:17:54.200 Because bad emotions are so powerful. They have so much impact and they're so contagious

00:18:00.660 that if you respond angrily, they're going to get even angrier and you just start this cycle of

00:18:06.020 retaliation. And so a minor disagreement, you know, just escalates to a major fight. You know,

00:18:13.200 there've been interesting experiments, but they play a game called dictator where people have to decide

00:18:17.140 how to divide up money and they take turns. And when one person starts behaving negatively,

00:18:22.800 it just escalates, you know, and it just gets worse and worse. And the people get angrier and

00:18:27.900 angrier at each other and more and more selfish. So basically got to try to avoid doing bad things,

00:18:34.600 avoid over-interpreting things that your partner's done. And when things do go wrong,

00:18:39.620 give them the benefit of the doubt or at least stay calm and don't escalate.

00:18:43.920 Well, another area of life where we have relationships is with our kids and parents these days are really

00:18:48.980 anxious about if they're parenting right, if they're doing enough. So they get these books on how to

00:18:53.520 raise, you know, resilient kids and how to get their kids be a star athlete or do well in school and they

00:18:59.880 pay for all this stuff. But your research in the book that you highlight says that probably isn't doing

00:19:05.580 that much and you'd be better off just being a good enough parent.

00:19:08.740 Yeah. I mean, this is some of the cheerier research, I think, really, because what it shows is you don't have

00:19:13.800 to kill yourself. You don't have to be the super parent. You don't have to be a tiger mom or a 0.85

00:19:18.160 helicopter parent because, you know, this is an aspect of the negativity effect where bad parenting

00:19:24.740 makes a big difference. Good parenting does not make that much difference. So as long as you're not

00:19:30.960 neglectful, as long as you're not abusive, as long as you're not violent, your kid is going to turn out

00:19:36.000 okay no matter what else you do, as long as you avoid the bad stuff. And we base this, you know,

00:19:41.640 these are studies about the effect of the home environment and the parents on kids' IQs. And what

00:19:47.780 it shows is that a bad home environment can, you know, can really stop a child from reaching his full

00:19:53.220 IQ. But a good home environment, you know, whether it's good or whether it's stellar, you know, whether

00:19:58.540 they hire the best tutors and pay for the best schools, that doesn't raise the child's IQ. All you can

00:20:04.580 really do is avoid the bad stuff from happening. So as long as you avoid the bad stuff, you know, you don't

00:20:10.760 have to go to every soccer game, you don't have to help with every school project. And so we advise

00:20:15.140 people to be just a good enough parent, just avoid the mistakes. And that holds true for all kinds of

00:20:20.560 roles in life. I mean, you know, be a good enough spouse, be a good enough friend, be a good enough

00:20:26.480 boss, be a good enough worker. You don't have to be a superstar. You don't have to go all these extra

00:20:31.480 miles to do it. You just have to, you should focus on avoiding the bad stuff. You know, there's,

00:20:36.860 there's interesting research about how much credit you get for doing extra and there, and this was

00:20:42.520 inspired by a researcher who noticed that when stuff from Amazon arrived late, she was really

00:20:48.240 irritated. But when it came early, she didn't, you know, feel particularly grateful. So they did a

00:20:53.140 bunch of experiments where, where, you know, students would get, you know, somebody would promise to help

00:20:57.520 someone solve puzzles. And if they didn't fulfill the number of puzzles that they helped to help with,

00:21:03.540 people really gave them bad marks, but if they did 50% extra, if they did extra work,

00:21:08.560 they got very little extra credit. And, and there were some other experiments showing the same thing

00:21:12.780 that if people got tickets from a ticket broker that were worse than they were expected, they were

00:21:16.580 furious. If the seats were better than now, you know, they didn't really give the, the broker much

00:21:22.400 extra credit. So you don't, you get relatively little extra credit for, you know, for doing more than

00:21:28.320 you promised. But if you fall short of what you promised, then you pay a big price. So just focus

00:21:34.200 on not breaking promises, not on, on being the superstar parent or, you know, who does so much

00:21:40.180 more than is expected. So yeah, at work, uh, manage expectations, like under promise, over deliver,

00:21:46.780 don't over promise, and then under, because people are going to remember that more.

00:21:50.140 Right. People, just people remember the stuff you didn't, you know, the promises you didn't keep.

00:21:54.700 They remember the bad. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:21:59.120 And now back to the show. So I think an area where we've all experienced the negativity bias

00:22:04.580 or the negativity effect is when we receive criticism and it's painful. And it's even painful

00:22:10.860 whenever someone says something good about like, even if other people are praising what you've done,

00:22:15.160 like at work, whatever, there's like that one guy who says, you know, Hey, this could be better.

00:22:19.980 That just really, that's the thing you focus on. And so we, there's a tendency to like want to avoid

00:22:25.120 criticism, but criticism is what lets us get better. So are there any tactics that you and Roy came

00:22:31.620 across where we can get the benefits of criticism without it stinging so much and where we just

00:22:36.960 focus on it and become debilitated by it?

00:22:39.900 Yeah. I mean, there's two aspects of it. One of it, as far as it, on the receiving end, I mean,

00:22:44.920 one bit of practical advice we offer. When I started writing them, I was writing an op-ed column

00:22:50.260 at the New York times and I'm kind of a libertarian and the New York times audience is not like that.

00:22:55.920 And another journalist who, who had been a liberal writer at the wall street journal editorial page,

00:23:01.520 he was in the opposite position. You know, you know, he was, he was writing for an audience of

00:23:05.180 different, his one piece of advice to me was don't read the mail

00:23:09.420 because you're just going to get excoriated. And, and our advice is, especially in dealing

00:23:16.840 with online comments, because people get this and they go through it. And as you say, the one

00:23:20.840 bad comment, you get all these supportive comments, congratulations, good work, but one that there's

00:23:25.500 one snarky thing and that's what stays with you. It's like writers read a review of a book where

00:23:29.980 it's a rave, but all they can think about is that one line faulting something in the book.

00:23:34.860 So one bit of advice is if you can, you do want to learn from the criticism, you know,

00:23:40.760 when you post something online and someone and people react to it, there may, there, there

00:23:45.680 may well be something useful in their response. But if you read the stuff yourself, you're just

00:23:50.820 going to fixate on the bad stuff and get, and it's, it's debilitating, as you say. So as have

00:23:56.140 someone else read it for you, pick out the useful stuff, keep out the, just the basically the,

00:24:01.100 you know, the useless snarky stuff. And also try to follow that four to one ratio that,

00:24:06.420 you know, that, you know, give you at least four good things for every bad thing.

00:24:10.160 Now, you know, when it comes to giving criticism, most of us are pretty bad at that, I think.

00:24:15.260 And, you know, the psychologists have found in, when they ask people how they like to give

00:24:19.860 criticism, you know, if there's good news and bad news, most people would rather start

00:24:24.920 with the good news. It's a lot more pleasant to start a conversation, to tell someone that.

00:24:28.800 And then, you know, so you say the nice things, you're doing a great job with this, and you

00:24:33.020 are like that, you did that well. Oh, and here's one area that I'm concerned about we need to work

00:24:38.720 on. And that's the easiest way to give the criticism, is to start, to ease into it and

00:24:44.260 start out as Mr. Nice Guy. But most people, if you ask them how they'd like to receive good news

00:24:50.880 and bad news, they would rather get the bad news first. And that, that's actually the best way to

00:24:56.080 deliver it. Because when you start out with a lot of praise for someone, they'll, you know,

00:25:01.300 they're listening. But then when you hit them with that bit of criticism, it's, you know, the power of

00:25:05.460 bad is so strong. It's just that jolt to the brain. And so, and the brain immediately focuses on that,

00:25:12.560 and it forgets the praise. You know, an example of this, when a computer crashes, you know, the tech

00:25:18.280 people say, well, what were you doing when the, you know, right before the computer crashed?

00:25:21.980 And people often just can't remember at all what they were doing because that sudden, awful thing,

00:25:27.400 oh my God, the computer's crashed. You just forget what happened before that. You're just so focused

00:25:32.060 on this new threat. And it's the same way when you get criticism, you forget the praise.

00:25:37.540 So, and if you save the criticism for the end, then people walk out, that's all they remember.

00:25:42.260 So it's, and they're demoralized. So it's better to, I mean, you might start out with saying,

00:25:47.640 you know, I mean, if you're evaluating an employee, you say, you know, you had a good year and we're

00:25:51.940 looking forward to another good one. So they know they're not going to get fired, but basically get

00:25:55.980 the bad stuff out of the way early. And then after you give the bad stuff, then their brains on high

00:26:01.160 alert, you know, and then they'll start paying attention and remembering the good stuff. And,

00:26:06.440 you know, you pivot from the bad to the good, try to do, you know, at least four good things for every

00:26:11.860 bad thing and try to look at things from a positive standpoint. You know, you say that maybe you had

00:26:16.280 trouble, you know, working with some people this year, you're working with a team, but you're

00:26:21.000 great on your own. We're going to do more solo projects for you next year and look at and frame

00:26:26.840 the criticism in a positive way that this was a problem, but we're going to solve that by doing

00:26:32.180 this the other way. So it sounds like you don't even do the criticism sandwich where you go positive,

00:26:37.000 negative, positive, just start negative, then end with four, like increasing positive things.

00:26:42.760 Right. I mean, yeah, basically that's it. I think that they, I mean,

00:26:45.840 that's the way to do it. Now you also, and we cite some research in this, that you don't want them to,

00:26:53.120 you know, walk out, you know, just only remembering the positive and they really will remember the

00:26:57.560 criticism, but it does help, you know, at the end to remind them a bit that we do have some things we

00:27:02.460 have to improve that. So I think that, you know, get most of the criticism out of the way, then,

00:27:07.680 you know, elaborate some praise on, and then an end with reminders of how we're going to improve

00:27:12.700 next year. So they're still motivated. You know, there's still that power of bad, you know,

00:27:17.000 to motivate them to improve because, you know, that's what you need to improve is you need that

00:27:21.340 motivation. And then there's nothing like, like the negativity effect to motivate people.

00:27:26.520 Well, speaking of motivation, there's been a debate within psychology and managerial science on

00:27:33.100 what's the best way to motivate employees. And you all see this in, with family, with parents,

00:27:37.780 what's the best way to motivate kids to do what you want them to do? And there's that age-old debate,

00:27:42.420 is it sticks or carrots? And lately it seems like it's more carrots, like, you know, provide rewards,

00:27:47.500 help people flourish. But you guys highlight research, no, sticks are actually more powerful

00:27:51.560 than carrots. Right. You know, the, that whole saying about the, you know, the carrot or the stick,

00:27:56.840 it comes from, you know, there were these 19th century cartoons and there was, you know, advice for

00:28:01.980 parents that, you know, the way to motivate a horse or donkey to go forward was you dangle a

00:28:07.020 carrot in front of them instead of hitting them with a stick. And it was this little sort of

00:28:11.080 parable to tell you that rewards work better. And as we're saying in the book, did anyone ever see,

00:28:17.300 you know, a horse winning the Kentucky Derby with a carrot in front of it? You know, the jackies are 1.00

00:28:21.940 using the whip and, and that's, um, so it's, in our interpretation of that, of that parable of the

00:28:28.960 carrot versus the stick is that people would rather use the carrot. It's, you know, it's much more

00:28:34.080 pleasant to do that than it is to, you know, punishing people isn't fun unless you're a sadist.

00:28:39.040 But in fact, you know, the stick is generally more effective. You know, there's a lot of research on

00:28:44.860 this. Unfortunately, this lesson got lost, especially with children and in schools, thanks to the self

00:28:51.900 esteem movement that, you know, we had, you know, the 1970s and 80s. Now that was really one of the

00:28:58.920 sororier mistakes in psychology. Roy Baumeister, my coauthor, he did, when he started his career,

00:29:04.300 he was working on self esteem and it looked like a promising area. And then he realized that

00:29:08.620 the psychologists just had it backwards. You know, you know, they thought that, well, because,

00:29:12.980 you know, people who succeed have high self esteem, if we can just boost kids' self esteem,

00:29:17.560 they'll succeed. And he realized that they had the causation backwards. When you succeed,

00:29:23.100 that boosts your self esteem. But when you boost someone's self esteem, it doesn't help you succeed.

00:29:28.300 It doesn't work that way. So, but the consequences of that is that everybody gets a trophy philosophy

00:29:35.320 that evolved with kids and, you know, nobody, nobody loses. And that has translated into the

00:29:41.340 education system where there's just been rampant grade inflation, both at the high school level

00:29:47.640 and at the college level where, you know, the average grade places is an A minus now. And as a result,

00:29:54.340 you know, students in both high school and in college, they are learning less than they used

00:29:59.080 to in the past. And there's some clever experiments. You know, there's a famous one with young kids

00:30:04.880 where they were given a series of tasks to learn. And, and some of the kids received a marble as a

00:30:11.740 reward for every, you know, right answer they did. And they would, you know, put the marble in a jar.

00:30:16.940 And the other kids got a jar full of marbles and they took out a marble for each long answer.

00:30:24.060 And the kids who had the marble taken out learned a lot faster than the kids who got the reward.

00:30:30.560 So, and they found that in other examples where they've, you know, offered bonuses to teachers if

00:30:36.540 their students, you know, did well that year and, and, and raised their test scores. But sometimes,

00:30:42.660 and as a control, as a comparison, that they told, they gave some teachers the money ahead of time and

00:30:49.460 said, if your kids do not learn better this year, we're going to take that bonus away. So, it was framed

00:30:55.520 as a penalty rather than a year-end bonus. And the, and the teachers who faced that penalty, their students

00:31:03.060 did better than the ones who got the reward at the end. So, in general, you know, it's better, penalties

00:31:08.740 are stronger than rewards. And, I mean, we're not against rewarding kids. I mean, you want to give,

00:31:13.800 you know, a child bonus for every A&S report card, give them a reward for that, fine. But I would also

00:31:19.180 deduct money when they're slacking off and they're not doing well. And I think schools should really

00:31:24.840 give honest grades instead of trying to make students feel better. They should, when kids do

00:31:29.580 bad in a class, they should get a bad grade because they're not going to learn otherwise.

00:31:33.060 I thought it was interesting when that chapter you talk about cares versus sticky, the interesting

00:31:37.580 tip that you started off with was religion and that you highlight research that religions that

00:31:42.580 focus on hell and damnation actually flourish more than the ones who just talk about heaven and angels

00:31:50.320 and goodness and whatever.

00:31:52.120 Yeah, you know, it's a fascinating trend. I was, I was really intrigued by it. There's a sociologist of

00:31:58.080 religion named Rodney Stark who has traced this and you really see it in the history of religion in

00:32:02.820 America where, you know, back, back in colonial times, America was not a very religious place.

00:32:08.080 I mean, you know, the Puritans and the early settlers have been very devout, but, you know,

00:32:12.840 people were, I think they had six drinks a day. There were more taverns in, I think, Boston than in,

00:32:17.760 you know, in Amsterdam and, and, you know, the lots of premarital sex, lots of illegitimate births.

00:32:23.820 And then there was this great awakening that happened in the early 18th century. And,

00:32:28.240 and what happened was it was these, these hell fearing ministers went around preaching,

00:32:33.620 you know, damnation and, and Jonathan Edwards, you know, gave his famous sermon, you know,

00:32:38.380 sinners in the hand of an angry God. At that point, the, the established religions, you know, 0.94

00:32:43.400 were the Anglican religion, you know, which became Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism.

00:32:47.720 And they preached a more gentle cerebral kind of religion. You know, their ministers went to Harvard

00:32:52.780 and Yale and some of them didn't particularly even believe in hell, but the Methodists who were

00:32:57.720 the considered these uneducated rubes and they were, you know, they looked down very much by the 1.00

00:33:03.580 religious establishment. The Methodists became the big, you know, the largest, uh, religious

00:33:09.420 denomination in the United States. And then they eventually, you know, they eventually went

00:33:14.520 mainstream, you know, their ministers started going to seminaries. They started preaching a more

00:33:19.100 benevolent message. And then they promptly faded where it was hell fearing Baptists and Catholics 0.90

00:33:24.680 became the dominant ones. And then when the Catholic church, you know, in the Vatican, you know,

00:33:30.020 to council in the 1960s, they softened it, you know, a lot of their things and they suffered a big

00:33:35.740 decline of membership. And so you get evangelicals and Pentecostals rising. So there is this thing

00:33:41.660 that what gets people into the pews on Sunday is fear of hell much more than the promise of a

00:33:48.200 celestial reward. And there's been some really interesting research that psychologists have done

00:33:52.540 where they've looked at surveys around the world. And they have found that in countries where more

00:33:57.900 people believe in hell, you know, versus people who just believe in heaven, in those countries,

00:34:03.060 there's a lower crime rate. And they did a very clever experiment in the lab once where they,

00:34:08.300 they, they were giving students a test and they told them that there was a glitch in the computer and,

00:34:13.520 and they made it possible to cheat. But so, but please don't do that. We're going to fix this glitch.

00:34:18.200 So of course the researchers are watching to see who cheats and they found that, and then they

00:34:24.380 saw who cheated and who didn't. And they found that what predicted it, it didn't really matter

00:34:28.960 if you were religious or not. Didn't, you know, most of the other variables didn't matter, but what

00:34:33.180 did matter was how you conceived of God. And if you thought of God as a more punishing, vengeful God,

00:34:39.420 then you were less likely to cheat. You know, that hell is stronger than heaven, at least when it comes to

00:34:45.940 deterring bad behavior. Right. So yeah, another, another example, manifestation of the negativity

00:34:50.440 effect. Yes. Another place where people see it is on teams, this negativity effect in the, the,

00:34:55.340 there's that, you know, Osmond song, one bad apple, don't spoil the whole bunch of girls. 0.99

00:34:59.720 Right. Is, I mean, is that true? Is Donnie right? Or does one bad apple actually spoil the whole bunch?

00:35:04.600 Well, well, you know, the Osmonds, the whole meaning of that cliche changed because of that

00:35:10.000 song. I mean, now it used to be one rotten apple spoils his companions and that goes all the way

00:35:15.960 back to Chaucer, Benjamin Franklin did it. And then the Osmonds came out with this song,

00:35:20.300 one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, which in the first place, apples don't really grow in

00:35:25.120 bunches, right? And, and so the, and so the, the meaning of that cliche change where suddenly it was,

00:35:33.060 you know, the one bad apple is not representative and, you know, that, yeah, that something went

00:35:37.880 wrong there, but that's just one bad, every place will have a few bad apples. It doesn't mean the

00:35:42.440 whole place is bad. But in fact, what the research shows is that negative behavior is in fact

00:35:48.120 contagious. Bad apples do spoil their companions. Then there've been interesting experiments where

00:35:53.540 they've looked at people working in teams and, you know, the researchers thought that if you measure

00:35:59.480 the average ability of the team members, that would predict how well the team works, but what

00:36:04.680 actually predicted how well the team would work was the ability, the performance of the worst person

00:36:10.360 on the team. Because one person, one bad apple brings down the whole team. You know, there were some

00:36:16.000 really interesting experiments where they had people acting out different varieties. Researchers

00:36:21.180 classify bad apples into several categories. There's, there's the jerk who's just kind of obnoxious to 1.00

00:36:28.180 people and belittles them. There's the downer who's just depressed and, and convinced everything 1.00

00:36:33.820 will turn out wrong. There's a slacker, somebody who doesn't pull his own weight. They had an actor

00:36:39.040 to, to portray each of these types and he would sit down with the group. And, you know, when he was a

00:36:45.020 jerk, this was a bunch of business students who were supposed to be coming up with a strategy for a 1.00

00:36:50.040 company. And so when he was a jerk, he'd sit there and somebody would suggest an idea and he would say, 1.00

00:36:56.000 have you ever taken a business course before? You know, just really belittle them. And when he was 1.00

00:37:02.360 a slacker, he just like put his head down on the, you know, he'd just sit back and, and, and look at

00:37:07.380 his phone and do it. And then when he was a downer, he would just like look so sad. He would, he would

00:37:12.940 get himself in the mood for the role by, by pretending his cat had died and he just put his head on the

00:37:20.000 table. And the interesting thing was that they found, you know, as they expected that putting this one

00:37:25.600 bad apple on the team would, would hurt his performance. And that did indeed happen. But

00:37:31.020 what really surprised the researchers was how contagious the behavior was that, you know, 0.98

00:37:36.300 that if they brought in the one jerk to work on the team, the other people started acting like 1.00

00:37:41.580 jerks too. And not just in retaliation against this one jerk, they started behaving badly toward each 1.00

00:37:46.920 other. When there was one slacker in there, pretty soon everyone was just, oh, whatever, 0.99

00:37:51.740 let's just get this over with. They started slacking off too. And when the downer was in

00:37:56.900 there, the other people would just start getting depressed too. And they go, what's the point of

00:38:00.400 this thing? So it's, you know, it's, it's, this bad behavior is very contagious. And it's,

00:38:07.260 it's more important when you're hiring people, when you're assembling the team to avoid bad apples and

00:38:13.520 get rid of them. If you have to, then it is to concentrate on hiring the absolute best person. I mean,

00:38:18.620 the power of bad is, you know, it's so powerful that it's, uh, that that's what determines how

00:38:25.700 well things will go. So a good enough employee might be like, yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. I mean,

00:38:31.740 it's nice to get good ones, but you know, really just, you know, the bad apples are what will kill

00:38:35.820 you. And then the same thing in business where, you know, it's the unhappy customers who can really

00:38:41.780 do damage to you. You know, a one-star review hurts you much more than, you know, than a five-star

00:38:47.080 review helps you. And, and, and so you need to really focus on, on avoiding unhappy customers.

00:38:53.800 And, and that's more important than concentrating on the good ones. If you've got to focus,

00:38:58.720 make sure to avoid those unhappy ones. Well, let's end with talking about the place where

00:39:03.240 a lot of people feel, and there's been a lot written about this, um, that increases our negativity

00:39:08.100 bias or place to it. And we, you alluded to earlier, it's like the online world. First off,

00:39:12.460 I mean, is that, is it really true that like you see all these studies where, you know, being online

00:39:16.900 increases things like depression, anxiety, loneliness, et cetera. And, you know, people

00:39:22.160 write about that and say, you got to quit the internet because of this. Are those, is that really

00:39:26.440 true? Are we, is that a manifestation of our negativity bias? I think that's a manifestation

00:39:31.520 of, of, of journalist negativity bias because, you know, I'd heard that too. And I thought, yeah,

00:39:36.620 maybe, you know, it does make sense. And in fact, when writing this book, I thought, well,

00:39:39.620 this is another reason to write this book is we've got so much social media has just increased

00:39:44.380 the problems of the negativity effect. And I saw the studies, you know, about Instagram envy and

00:39:49.940 Facebook depression and, and, you know, people saying that more time you spent, the worse it was.

00:39:54.760 But then I started looking into it more. And what I found, you know, throughout my journalistic

00:39:58.320 career, I've always found, and we write in the book about what I call the crisis crisis, that

00:40:02.780 we're constantly inventing crises, that when you look into things, you see that, you know,

00:40:07.800 the scares don't pan out. And that was what I found about social media too, that when people

00:40:13.420 really looked at all the research, when they did meta-analyses of different studies, they found

00:40:18.240 that these, these, these problems like Facebook depression and Instagram envy were really overstated,

00:40:22.820 that yes, there are some people who, you know, who are affected, you know, you know, a woman who is,

00:40:29.020 is really concerned about her own weight, her own body image, who spends a lot of time looking at 0.51

00:40:33.840 these beautiful models on Instagram that can, you know, have some bad effects for it. But she 1.00

00:40:38.840 already had that problem to begin with. And, and, and, and for most people, it doesn't have that bad

00:40:44.040 effect. And, and, and then what the research shows is that, you know, for most people, you know, for,

00:40:50.020 you know, for young people worried about peer pressure, it's the people that they know in the

00:40:54.060 real world that really matter to them. It is, you know, the online world isn't bringing in all this

00:40:58.120 awful stuff. And the good news about social media is that people tend to be more positive on social

00:41:05.560 media than the mass media is. You know, I mean, I'm, you know, I've been a journalist all my life

00:41:10.260 and I'm what, you know, I call one of the merchants of bad because mass media, to attract a mass

00:41:16.180 audience, you go for those common things that everyone responds to. And most of them are bad.

00:41:22.300 You know, it's easy to, you know, we're all afraid of dying. We're all afraid of getting sick.

00:41:26.180 We're all afraid of being injured. So the easiest way to get a big audience to appeal to a lot of

00:41:31.140 people instantly is to scare them with something, is to exploit that negativity effect. Whereas

00:41:38.500 social media, now there are people on social media who do that or, you know, who, who, who spread a lot

00:41:44.040 of vitriol and we hear about all the flame wars and the vicious stuff that gets set on social media,

00:41:49.080 but that is not the norm. And what's nice about social media is that it, that it allows people

00:41:55.900 to concentrate on positive things. You know, the positive stuff that interests us tends to be

00:42:00.860 more idiosyncratic. We don't all have the same taste, you know, if we're interested in science

00:42:05.760 or history or psychology. So it's not so easy to get a mass audience appealing to those positive

00:42:13.400 interests, but social media lets you do that. You form your own group and, you know, you find a website,

00:42:18.780 you do that. I mean, you do podcasts like we're, you know, we're talking now for, you know, 45 minutes,

00:42:23.440 an hour about positive stuff, mostly about how to make life better. And we're not scaring people

00:42:29.280 about, did you hear about the latest terrorist attack? Did you hear about the latest outrage

00:42:33.900 that the other political party did? We're talking about science, you know, positive things, scientific

00:42:39.300 research and, and how to make life better. And there's just so much of that on social media and

00:42:44.660 there, and we cite in, in the power of bad, we cite, you know, the research showing that people tend to

00:42:50.320 spread positive things more than negative things on social media. Um, they share positive news stories.

00:42:56.300 They, they don't send a lot of pictures of playground massacres of their friends. They send

00:43:00.840 beautiful pictures of nature. They share stories about, you know, new advances in science, new,

00:43:07.180 you know, new, um, new books that they like, new theories that they've heard. Um, and there's,

00:43:14.000 there's research also that on Twitter, that people who tweet positively tend to get more followers and

00:43:20.900 that positive tweets actually get spread more widely. Now the negative tweets get retweeted very

00:43:26.660 quickly, you know, more quickly. And you have that phenomenon where suddenly everyone's piling on

00:43:31.100 something. There's this mass outrage, but in general, it's the positive stuff that travels farther

00:43:37.960 that gets retweeted more often. So in that sense, uh, you know, we're hopeful about the future because I

00:43:43.300 think as people learn to follow this low bad diet, if you curate your social media feed, if you go to

00:43:49.000 the, you know, the right websites, if you follow the right people and have the right friends, people

00:43:54.320 who share positive stuff, if you follow that rule of four and try and get four uplifting things for

00:44:00.220 every downer, um, you'll get a much more accurate view of the world. And I mean, you'll see how much,

00:44:06.280 how much is going right in the world. And, and, and that's much better than, than sitting around

00:44:11.780 thinking that the world's going to hell. You know, one of the, the saddest things that I see today is

00:44:16.540 that virtually every measure of human welfare is improving. You know, we are the luckiest people

00:44:23.880 in history that there's never been a better time to be alive. And yet the richer we get, the healthier

00:44:30.420 we get, um, the more gloomy we get about the world. And it's, it's very strange in international

00:44:37.600 surveys. When you ask people, you know, uh, how optimistic they are about the future,

00:44:41.740 it is people in, in rich countries like the United States who have it better than anyone else in

00:44:47.480 history, who are the most pessimistic. Whereas people in poor countries, they, you know, they're

00:44:52.720 more realistic. They realize how much life has gotten better for them. Whereas the people in the United

00:44:57.960 States, we, we have it so, uh, we have it so good that we have time to, to basically think about it,

00:45:03.880 to come up with all these first world problems and, and convince ourselves to, you know, that things

00:45:08.500 are awful. You know, there's an old saying, no food, one problem, much food, many problems. And we

00:45:16.160 just have a luxury to worry about lots of things. And, and it's fine to worry about problems because

00:45:21.080 when we address problems, you know, we come up with solutions, but we need to keep our perspective

00:45:25.780 that things are getting better for, for, for most people in the world. And there's a lot more good

00:45:31.420 going on than bad. Well, John, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn

00:45:36.140 more about the book and your work? Um, they can, uh, uh, the book is called The Power of Bad, How the

00:45:41.180 Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. Um, it's by, it's published by Penguin Press. I've got

00:45:47.060 a website, JohnTierneyNYC.com. Penguin Random House has got a website for it. And, uh, um, uh, and I guess

00:45:56.800 that I'd have to say, you know, the book's available at, uh, at your bookstore and at Amazon. I hope

00:46:01.640 people buy it. And I, and I hope that, you know, people will use the book to, to, you know, to, to,

00:46:06.400 you know, to harness the power of bad when it's useful and overcome it when it's not useful.

00:46:12.800 Well, John Tierney, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:46:14.980 Thank you, Brett.

00:46:16.940 My guest today was John Tierney. He's the coauthor of the book, The Power of Bad. It's available on

00:46:20.900 Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his

00:46:24.460 website, JohnTierneyNYC.com. Also check out our show notes at AOM.IS slash Power of Bad.

00:46:30.180 We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:46:40.120 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - January 08, 2020

#574： The Power of Bad — Overcoming the Negativity Effect

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