Book tv continues now on cspan2. Television for serious readers. [inaudible conversations] if i could have everybodys attention, wed like to get started. Im fine, the editor of city journal and i want to welcome you here today on behalf of the Manhattan Institute. Its with great pleasure i could to introduce don tierney, ensco author with the esteemed psychologist, roy of the fascinating and useful new book, the power of god. The negativity affects rules and how we can rule it. Its on sale outside the room here. John has long been one of the nations leading voices on the intersection of science and public policy. Make no mistake, however calmly reasonably expressed, a very contrarian voice. It was johns New York Times column, the big city which ran from the mid 90s until 2002, i think, that first made me a fan of his work. There he took on any number of myths about cities from the advocacy of rent control, root causes of homelessness to environmental policy. One remarkable column was born from johns Rosie Odonnells relentless public criticism of mayor Rudy Giulianis enforcement to get the homeless off new york cities street. How would the hometown, a suburb of nyack deal with a similar problem . He let his beard grow a few days, he didnt shower and then he dressed himself up in dirty clothes and a torn parka and headed up where he caught himself down on the sidewalk right in front of odonnells mansion. Within minutes, Security Guard was aggressively confronting him, asking him to move along, threatening him to move along. The cops arrived soon after and he wound up being taken down to the station. Point proved about a certain kind of elite hypocrisy, virtue clement. A factor of in peace he wrote for the times, recycling is garbage. Provocative argument, the record to the most hate mail ever generated by New York Times articles. [applause] johns journalism appeared not just in the times remains an occasional contributor, wall street journal, atlantic, new york Washington Post and many others. Twenty city journal, john has continued to eliminate and enrage writing about other things, counter productivity of anti vaping, why the left is actually waging the real war on science and art latest issue, a piece that is almost guaranteed to drive everybody insane, my plastic bags or action better for the environment rather than alternatives. [applause] it shows his talent for exploding widely accepted views. The broadcasting city journal prius based on johns work as i, has had more than 2 million views since we released it. His new book, the power of bad falls on willpower which was coauthored maestro and sold an impressive 350,000 copies since its release a couple of years ago. Its so popular, as are telling john, you could find at airports. That means youve got it made. It will be true soon, the previous book explored the biological and psychological aspects of human wealth. The new book, i mentioned, it is useful, studies with psychologist calling negativity bias. Human propensity to focus disproportionately on emotions and bad news. Its a reason one port and criticism can seem more powerful to us in a paragraph of praise. John and roy argue in this book this irrational side of human nature can be quickly and lead to memorable actions in life and public policy. The good news is it can be mastered in the power of that shows how. I dont want to anticipate it so i give you john tierney. Thank you. [applause] thanks very much. Thank you, brian for the kind words. Its been great working with you as an editor. Onto thank you for holding this lunch and also for Everything Else its done. I found this was the one voice of sanity on urban policy. Ive always given the Manhattan Institute the credit for turning around new york city. Im so impressed with them that i think they are going to save us even from the current mayor. [laughter] i suggest how to save the rest of the world. I imagine, as you may have guessed, that involves by my book. [laughter] the power of bad is about a fundamental fact of life thats just now becoming clear to scientists. The universal tendency of bad events and bad emotions to affect us more strongly than good ones. In short, bad is stronger than good. A famous paper by my coauthor, a social psychologist, since he published it, there have been hundreds of studies looking at the negativity impacts on just about all parts of our life. In the book, who wrote this book to show people how to deal with it and how this negativity bias in our brains affects our romantic relationship, parenting, education, religion, sports, business, mass media, social media and just about Everything Else. We argue the negativity effect underlies the most important problem in politics and public policy. A problem that has bothered me since i got my first inkling of it, one of my first jobs in journalism, a summer intern, a little man on the totem pole, i got a dread assignment on friday night to write the weather story. In philadelphia there was a heat wave that we can, its not exactly a phenomenon in july but i had to find something new to say about it. So there a lot of philadelphians going to the beach so i called the Police Station down at the jersey shore and i begged for some news from the sgt. And he said well, theres nothing going on. We have heavy traffic, thats all. I said well, is the traffic unusually heavy . [laughter] and he goes, no, its always like this on fridays. I was just a young reporter, very inexperienced but some primal journalistic instinct told me that this was not the right answer. [laughter] i started calling Police Stations up in town in jersey shore asking them, is this the worst traffic youve ever seen . [laughter] they kept telling me know, its friday night, its always like this. Finally after about a half dozen phone calls, the one sgt. Said to me well, yeah, i guess its the worst ive ever seen. [laughter] for all i knew, it was the guys first week on the job. [laughter] but that didnt matter. I had might lead and i had my headline. The story got to the paper so i considered it a great success. I also felt guilty. I knew how sleazy this was. Why did i fabricate these traffic crisis . Why did my Editors Award me for it . Why do people want to read this kind of story . I kept wondering about these questions in my career and i kept being assigned to write about suppose and crises, the population crisis, the Energy Crisis, the epidemic crisis, recycling crisis and whenever i looked into them, i just cap seen that these were basically grander versions of my traffic story. The reporters would find some isolated problem and they would go hunting for some alleged expert who declare this the epic global catastrophe. [laughter] didnt matter if theyve been wrong before. They kept getting quoted. I just kept wondering, why do we journalist keep prying roles and why do people keep listening to us . Audit answer until i read this paper. After previous researchers noticed this reporter cared more about financial losses and gains, the codgers found a bad First Impression has much more than a good First Impression. We are wondering what gives back the power in the situation. Other situations where good was stronger and he scoured research in all kinds of discipline and to his surprise, he couldnt find andy any counter examples. He stumbled onto this major phenomenon that extended into so many fields that nobody noticed this overall pattern. Bad was relentlessly stronger than good. As brian said a word of criticism has so much more impact than praise. The penalties are much more effective in motivating people than prizes. A bad employee has much more impact than a good employee. Bad parenting can seriously hurt children but being a really super great parent doesnt make make good difference. [laughter] that the good news. Just be a good enough parent, you dont have to be perfect. The sense of marriages, it depends mainly on how spouses, its not the good things they do, it depends mainly on how spouses deal with negativity. That holds true for other relationships. We pride ourselves on many good things we do for our family and friends, going the extra mile for our customers and clients but what really matters is what we dont do. Avoiding bad is much more important than doing good. He dont get much extra credit at all for going beyond what you promise but you pay a big price for falling short. The book we explain how to harness the power of bad when its useful how to overcome it when its not. We offer guidelines like the rule of four, its a rough guideline but it typically takes for good things to overcome one bad thing. If you are late for one meeting, youre not going to make up for it by being early the next time. If you take one hurtful thing to your partner, you better plan on a lot more than one complement to make up for it. Theres an upside of the negativity effect which is this power of the motivation to teach. You can see this clearly at schools in new york and other cities that have been inspired by an educational reform that started here at the Manhattan Institute. They advocated an alternative to the everybody gets a trophy philosophy of the educational establishment. The kind i was causing schools and high schools and colleges, Great Schools to inflate grades and eliminate penalties for failure. They started the movement called no excuses schools. This is where both students and teachers pay a price for poor work. The results have just been astonishing at Charter Schools like success academy. They are the poorest neighborhoods in new york city and they outscore every School District in the state. Its really proof, there are various reasons but one of the main reasons is there harvesting the negativity effect. They are using prizes penalties and that of prizes and they are learning faster and more. The downside of the negativity effect is its power to work our perspective and skew our decisions. When i consider the most prevalent form of addiction, which is an addiction to safety, this is why football coaches make the same stupid its people in the richest countries who found the most of the global rates, disease and violence have been plummeting, the most people in the United States and europe were blinded with progress going on because of the negativity bias and because we are bombarded by bad news. When i called the crisis crisis. This never ending series that leaves the public needlessly frightened and angry. Nearly half of americans worry that they were Family Member will die in a terrorist attack. Its a much safer climate. Children cant walk by themselves to school because they cant are the playgrounds themselves because answer right about stranger danger but the risk of an adoption is being struck by lightning. One survey that children in america were asked what the world would be like when they grew up, nearly one out of three of the children said they feared the universe was long no longer exist. This was before anyone heard of greta. Are some real problems in the world, the coronavirus for instance thats a new threat. The city journal pointed out in a rare piece that offered some perspective, this new virus to americans, its minuscule compared to the ordinary flu virus. Whats really novel about this new virus is how quickly we are responding to it. It used to take decades to develop a vaccine. Now they are talking about one in several months. We dont see that progress because of our brains negativity bias. We focus on the scare stories and worst case scenario, we seek the news. Thats the crisis crisis. Promoted by journalists, politicians with the help of academics and activists and other special interest. Theres a whole crisis industry, and emergence of bad, like i called on. You find them both on the left and right side of the political spectrum. They start panics, instill fears about new technologies from a foreign enemies, drugs, immigrants, environmental threats, whatever will trigger the brains alarm systems. They promote class warfare and tribalism, poison politics. I dont mean they are all in it just for the money. Many of them are generally alarmed, most effective naysayers are those who believe their own prophecies. Chicken little was truly convinced the sky was falling. The issue wasnt her sincerity but her interpretation of this acorn that fell on her head and her plan for dealing with it. The other animals sought shelter for this by going in where they were made a meal. Thats the crisis crisis. There are a lot of hungry foxes out there. You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Over and over, they hide press in order to promote their own careers and promote policies that help special interest and power officials well causing general harm to the rest of us. The Energy Crisis of the 1970s and the fear mongering Nuclear Power led to the policies that had a creation of much more coal power plant, we have Carbon Dioxide in the air more now. In iraq, there were so afraid of an imaginary danger, weapons of mass distraction that we allowed a real danger to happen, the spread of isis. People train a has nothing to do with e cigarettes like juul. Journalist and activists caused such a panic put outside misleading information, most americans have come to believe that e cigarettes are worse than smoking and the result, millions of smokers have been decided from making the switch that could save their lives. Whats really most damaging about the crisis crisis, its not one thing, as accumulative impact. This continual crisis monitoring leads to the condition known as demo sclerosis. The brain economist olson confide as the greatest prosperity and democratic society. The clogging of the economic arteries, by the gradual accumulation of favors and subsidies and regulations, the benefit special Interest Groups slowed down Everything Else. As olson said, its death by 1000 cuts. Here in new york city, developers used to be able to build homes for middle class and the poor. Today, they can afford to go only for the apple because so many different regulations and obstacles have built up over the years. The biggest obstacles are the rent control roles which originally passed at the end of world war ii as a temporary measure in response to a housing emergency but after the war ended, after the emergency ended, regulations never went away. That is typical of what happens in the crisis crisis. The economist, robert haze, crisis, he showed government growth expands during a crisis in honor crisis is over, and never shrinks back to its former size. Thats why i see it as the greatest problem in policy and politics. Its a brandnew threat to human survival, people have always been vulnerable to crisis mongering. The bribes of negativity is especially intense, we just see it 24 7 on our screens the people have always been vulnerable. 1918, long before cable news into the web, journalist described Public Discourse as a combat of praises. He really truly diagnosed the fundamental problem in politics. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and safety by noticing an endless series, most of them imaginary. This is a tough problem thats always going to be with us and the negativity bias is wired into our brains and i dont expect my fellow journalists and other merchants are not going to put thems selves out of business voluntarily. There are ways to deal with it, we propose some policies that were reduced in the Financial Properties profit, its a promising alternative stew contrary to what youve heard, s negative than mass media. I think theres a way we can use that to curate what we see and go on a low bad diet. However you get your news, we advise looking at the news today with three key principles in mind. Number one, the world will always seem to be in crisis number two, the crisis is never as bad as it sounds, number three the solution could easily make things worse. Id be happy to go in more detail in the queue and i and i want to make sure i dont and on a negative note myself. [applause] for all the problems, we really are optimistic in the longterm. We expect the world to keep getting better, we think the world wont exist when the kids grow up and we want more people to seek that. The negativity effect isnt going away but the more we understand it, the more we learn about it, the more capable we become of dealing with it. The bad will always be stronger than good. We are confident the good will ultimately prevail. As long as people find my book. [laughter] thank you. [applause] thank you, john. We have time for plenty of questions and why dont i start right here. Just identify herself before great speech. Is it possible the negativity bias has evolutionary origins in early man, it was very important to be aware of possible threats to survive . Could that be a possible basis . You are absolutely right. There is a 40 very good adaptable reason why it evolved great ancestors who survived on the savanna paid more attention to threats because in the book, life has to win every day. Its not its not as important to look out for predators and poisonous berries than to find the good ones. Bad teachers you more, it motivates you more but the comparison we make is that is adapted on the ancestral savanna to fatten up to survive but when youre surrounded all day by fattening foods and junk food, then its not so adaptive. Thats a situation we are in today, we are surrounded by skilled merchants of bad who basically trigger that way to scare us and manipulate us. But there are still great uses of bad, one thing i talk about in the book is that younger people are much more sensitive to the negatively biased because its more important when youre younger to learn. As people get older, they use these natural defenses. We have a chapter about people, older people make better decisions because they dont focus on the bad and they learn to savor good moments, they use words like nostalgia to basically be more positive about life and enjoy it more. Fantastic talk. How to distinguish before the fact between a real crisis and manufacturing crisis . Clearly in the last 200 years, there have been very real crises, whether its the rise of anarchism or ideology, fascism, chinese cultural revolution, the time one might have thought anybody whos raising alarm about that, whose exaggerating the threat so possibly some of the things were worried about today, whether it divisive identity politics, manufactured or maybe they are civilization changing. How do you tell . Two answers. One, in general when theres its a lot of crises when you claim theres an environmental and health problem, the important thing, we are running out of energy, the best thing is to try and look at the biggest picture you can, the longest term and when you look at the longterm trends, for all of them theyve improved. In the 70s, the economist looked at longterm energy trends, everyone said we are running out of oil by the year 2000. They said no, oil will be cheaper. So thats one way to evaluate problems like that. The problem is you talk more, i would argue that things like the cultural revolution and communism, karl marx talked about the crisis of capitalism. Invented this crisis that income inequality, today we see this, income inequality is this crippling problem we have to deal with. If you look at the data about how much inequality there is and how much people feel about it, yet this person under capitalism around the world from a place is getting much better. We dont need to reengineer society, we dont need these revolutions to do it. I think revolutionaries are the one who loved to look at crises and say we have to reduce society to do that. I think it led to cultural revolution by communism, it can certainly stop progress. It just stops when people, once they discover the crisis, we just have to throw it out. Why dont we go to the back of the room there . As part of the negativity, these political ads, all are negative, none are positive and get we still listen to it or going back to the population bomb from a therapist one thing that made one of the miscalculations in history, listening to what he saying, how does it happen . In the book we talk about john who they predicted these mass famines in the 80s for overpopulation and the family didnt happen, they predicted by 2020, today, one filling people would be dead from Climate Change. During the nomination hearings, the client advisor, he said it was still a possibility. When you look back at what they were proposing, were advocating and saying the government has a right to limit family size. They talked about proposals when young women huge reached puberty, they should be implanted with a sterilizing caps off that could be removed only with official permission. It shocking they would do that but its one of the things about the crisis crisis and they rarely pay penalties for their mistakes. Its completely wrong for his full career, he advocates a fundamental human right denying it and theres this codependency between journalists and doomsayers. A professional courtesy, we know they were wrong before but we need their predictions to make stories so we tolerate it. Im kyle smith. John, he mentioned the incentive structure for journalists, my therapy another incentive on the other end . Like medic and pessimistic personalities, journalists might push them to seek out and celebrate bad news . It attracts people to write about bad news . I think it is certainly possible. It also attracts people i mean, most journalists ive known tend to be liberal. Liberals tend to want to expand the government and solve lots of problems so to do that, you want to say theres a crisis. They said he dont want to let a crisis go to waste. Theres that incentive. Theyre just more negative in general, are not sure about that, they noted that psychologists had suffered from an extreme negativity biased in the First Century that more than twice as many papers and twice as many textbooks to analyze peoples problems rather than looking at ways people could become happier. They said its because psychologists or sadists enjoy starting problems in their explanation was because bad is so much stronger than good much easier to measure that offense and much more visible so its easier to study them with significant results. I think the main reason they do it is a marketdriven thing but we know its the easiest way to get attention. Thats especially true in the mass media because when youre trying to reach the mass of audience, the easiest way is to appeal to something thats universal. We all share the same kind of basic fears of dying, sickness and violence. Its easy to appeal to that. The reason im more hopeful about social media i talked about this in the 90s, he is optimistic while everyone else was saying the new internet will be trivial and terrible, hearsay peoples the mass tends to be negative because everybody shares those but people pay for excellence, or cultural achievements for history, science, this kind of interest tend to be more miss interest. You cant appeal them with a mass audience but on facebook, you get groups and youtube, youve got all these Different Things to appeal to peoples positive interest, their desire to share knowledge. I think theres some hope there. The other thing thats interesting, social media has bad rap for the vitriol thoughts that, twitter wars and that does go on but people on social media Share Positive stories much more than they read negative stories. They dont really send their friends photographs of School Ground massacres. They tend to stare Share Positive stuff in there are interesting things about who gets followers on twitter, posie tweets they dont get retweeted as quickly as the negative ones in this counsel culture wars but they spread more widely. If we have less mass media and more social media, there could be less negativity. Right appear. That talk was so good, the people may not buy your book. You havent heard the best part. Left most of that out. I wanted to pick up on Heather Mcdonald question, identify early on, theres a group called contrarians, everyone is telling about their stocks and they do pretty well. I wonder how we use your kind of analysis to find out when theres a lot of psychologist and everyone is overreacting and if you sense that, its very valuable. I missed the question. Looking at the longterm incentive that feeling, theres research in australia about the Financial Markets that, there are a couple of measures that are released that are particular to australia, someone studies how the stock market reacted to it there and they found the negativity effect, when theres bad news, stocks went on. When theres good news, they didnt go up. People still react to bad news and therefore is a gut feeling, i got fear of doing it. Thats one example of the way you could use it. The other thing is, theres the effect of economists study about people hate to take muscle so much so they called on way too long and it takes someone else to come in and take the pain, take the loss. So thats an obvious way. Right here. My daughter says to me, you keep saying all these crisis what our but Climate Change is different. You have so many serious people really worried about this one. This one is different. I agree Climate Change is different from things like the Energy Crisis. But something the markets wont solve, as the price goes up, people look for new sources. Climate change is a common problem from a collective action problem. Its a genuine threat. I mean i think we should be doing more research on it and looking for ways to get more energy but i think its a great example of the crisis crisis because theres been ridiculously high predictions that people will be dead by 2020 or weve got ten more years now before i mean, its a genuine threat and i am confident that in the long run, we will come up with new low Carbon Energy sources and we will adapt to what we have to. The less carbon in the atmosphere the better but the other aspect of it is, those promoting this prices, the policies they are promoting are awful. Is a lot of work for them buf these treaties. The United States is actually reducing Carbon Emissions more than germany is because germany signs and treaties that have always had green energy. Been there actually behind schedule and these treaties in the u. S. Is ahead. And reason is because we have not the panic of abandoning, starting to close Nuclear Power plants which germany has done and also the main reason, we are reducing emissions, unlike some of the socalled green countries is that we are tracking and we are switching the school plans to natural gas. They will in the world last year in reducing Carbon Emissions. And it gets written about because it just doesnt fit the narrative. Windmills are fine to build but they arent going to make any difference in the long run. Need to get largescale sources of low Carbon Energy. Most of these, these policies are so going to do that. At the moment, theyre only really two practical ways to reduce Carbon EmissionsNuclear Power and substituting natural gas for coal. Much of the environmental establishment opposes both of them. Including the Democratic Candidates which is just insane. It is basically, they are not doing anything. Climate change as an excuse them to adopt other policies that they like to award at the politically correct companies. In pushing agenda that is not helping the rest of us. In light of that response. Tells a little bit about the plastic bag issue. It is fascinating. Sharpe the plastic panic, goes back to the 70s. People like Barry Commoner who wanted to ban all of these Plastic Products because they allmale they were running out and petroleum. Therefore we had to conserve our Precious Petroleum and we couldnt wasted on plastic. And then without panic, there were no reasons, is clogging trains and doing this and then Climate Change came along. And now the latest thing is that plastic in the ocean. It is true, there is going Plastic Waste in the ocean. And its a serious problem. But it is not because of our society throwaway society. In fact, recycle plastic, increase the chances that you put in the plastic in the oceans because contrary to what people think, exactly no market that recycle plastic. A lot of it just gets sent off to a landfill but some of it, and what they been doing for years now shifting it to asia. And then went to china and now going more to malaysia and vietnam. These countries do a terrible job managing the waste and they are the largest source of mismanaged waste the gas into the ocean. The Great Pacific garbage patch, more than half of it comes from fishing boats. We should do a better job to stop fishing boats from littering. Also the risk comes from asia and south america and africa. It is not coming from United States and europe. The other aspect is crazy about the plastic man is that no man Plastic Grocery bags, your increasing Carbon Emissions. All the substitutes, paper bags, tote bags, they ultimately involve more Carbon Emissions. Theres a much heavier. It takes a lot more energy to transport them and ship them. I know calculations, since San Francisco pan Plastic Grocery bags, and may doubled its greenhouse emissions. I think the one original contribution on this, people written some of this before is that i think the explanation to this is that you have to go back to the slot in the middle ages. When in a noble, they passed all of these laws about who could wear what a newsletter. And these laws were fully effective. Among historians, wondered why they keep passing these laws limiting any good pretty well again these people a great feeling of power and kept commoners in the place. I think thats really the ultimate thing that this plastic is they are sort of our modern ability, and people telling other people what to do with it. In the process, there might king life much more inconvenient for everybody and they are hurting the environment. Went time for one or two more questions right over here. John, i fully by your point. Its very powerful but is there really strong force. With a very strong will to survive. To make sure that we dont die in most cases. Theres optimism and that right. Life is good and worth living. And therefore maybe sometimes we overemphasize the dangers of it. Youre optimistic. That is a great point, there are some tennessee. Pollyanna principle which is for instance, although there are a lot more words afford negative things like pain than there are for pleasure, leaves the positive words more often. We do that to boost her spirits. Theres also this phenomenon called the optimism bias. When we look at the outside world, the negativity, we overestimate dangers. We focus on and we walk into a room with focus on the hostile face rather than a smiling face. We pay more attention to criticism and praise. We also have this bias, when we look inward. People really overestimate their own virtues. Theres this hilarious study resurveyed people serving time in the penitentiary for assorted crimes. Ask them to rid themselves of various things. On their moral standards, their selfcontrol, on their consideration for others, and they rated themselves above average. All these convicted criminals, they rated themselves above average in every single trident tech one and that was the trait of being lawabiding. On that the rated themselves only average. [laughter]. So we have that and is that optimism bias that allows us to go forward. We had the feeling that i know that most businesses fail but mine is going to work. But then also part of the crisis crisis. The war in iraq, world war i is an example. They cited explaining world war i that you overestimated and we overestimated the threshold in saddam. But at the same time that we overestimated our own ability to install democratic government. Singing this combination of hyping the track and also overestimating your own capacity to deal with it. Sue its disaster. Last question pretty. I am listening to your talk, i cant help to wonder if his addiction to crisis mentality explains the reasons for the super bowl show, the halftime tube super bowl show. I naively have a celebration of american is freedom and may be a thank you to the military. Athletic crowd. Instead, what we witnesses really a semi pornographic, show of the massage nation and i didnt even know what the connection was to the super bowl. I cant help but to think that maybe your old theory about negativity and the decline in despair, is really what we are witnessing on a cultural level. If you want to comment on that. There is certainly this tendency for an certainly journalism has worked written about this. Down on america, down on traditional morality and to celebrate. Sort of deviancy and in that sense. But the other thing, the shots at the super bowl. Thats another trait mass appeal. Its like negativity. People will respond to that. I things on that. Thank you very much john. Thank you very much john tierney. Thank you all for coming. The book, the power of bad is available outside. You will enjoy it. Thank you john. [background sounds]. Book tv covers book fairs and festivals around the country. Here is what is coming up pretty starting in march we are live from the festival of books, held at the university of arizona. As the battle new orleans because book festival posted by university. And later in the month it is the festival of the books in charlottesville. Followed by the National Writers conference in brooklyn. Information about upcoming book fairs and festivals, and watch a previous festival coverage, click the book fairs tab on the website. To be. Org. Booktv. Org. [background sounds]. Good evening everyone. My name is brittany, events manager. I would like to thank all of you for coming out tonight. I want to especially thank you for supporting an independent bookstore,. [applause]. Get ready to clap again. In a non