We, humans, are wired to note the negative when we’re taking in external stimuli. It’s one reason we have been able to survive and thrive as a species. In today’s world, however, it can feel less helpful.

Overly critical thinking gets us stuck in negative thought patterns and leads to nonstop fault-finding with people and situations. That creates more stress and possibly other mental health concerns, like depression and anxiety.

There are various reasons for what is called the “negativity bias,” and various ways it manifests. In simple terms, the right hemisphere of the brain develops first in infancy, before the more logical left hemisphere.

Negative emotions reside in the right hemisphere of the brain. They’re helpful when warning us of danger and setting off the “fight or flight” response. But we also store any negative experiences here, including those that happen in our earliest years.

In addition, we have an implicit memory system, a nonverbal type of memory that is centered in the amygdala. It holds fast to past dangers, and these memories tend to be rigid rather than evolving over time.

So, we might have faced a danger years ago, but we still retain its lessons in the body and brain. It’s a useful adaptation in our evolution but less welcome when we can’t move past old fears. Perceived dangers from early traumas are essentially branded into the more primitive parts of the nervous system, including the amygdala. That’s why they persist and can even last a lifetime.

Much research has examined the operation of negativity bias in humans. One study pointed to a plethora of past scientific findings to explain its prevalence, including:

• Negative reinforcement speeds up learning (compared to positive reinforcement).
• Negative external input commands more attention and cognitive/neural processing, as it’s perceived as more complex.
• People feel like they can judge a person or situation more quickly in the face of negative facts versus positives.

The researchers concluded “an approximate encoding of the negativity bias at the neural level.” Ultimately, they said, “Adults are far more attentive to and much more influenced in most psychological domains by negative than by positive information.”

NEGATIVITY BIAS IN THE BRAIN

Excessive criticism is rooted in brain activity, according to  Dr. Daniel Emina, a psychiatrist  The brain SPECT imaging work at Amen Clinics shows that areas of the brain with too much activity or too little activity can contribute to negative thinking patterns.

Some of the brain regions that can influence a critical point of view include:

• Amygdala: This almond-shaped structure is involved in emotional and fear responses. According to Dr. Emina, overactivity in the amygdala can lead to flare-ups of the brain’s “alarm system” that warns of danger. This can put people on high alert, looking for trouble at every corner.
• Anterior cingulate gyrus: Emina also points to the anterior cingulate gyrus as a source of critical thinking. This brain area’s job is to find errors, issues, and problems, so it can leap into fixer mode.

When this area is in balance, a person can usually let problems go. When there’s too much activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus, there can be what Dr. Emina calls excessive error detection. “That’s when you’re finding too many problems, either in yourself, in others, or in situations,