If i could have everyones attention, we would like to get started. My name is Brian Anderson on the editor of city journal and i want to welcome you here today on behalf of the Manhattan Institute. It is with great pleasure that i get to introduce and coauthor with the esteemed psychologist roy in the fascinating and useful new book, the power bed. The negativity affects rules as in how we can roll it and it is unsettled by the way outside the room here. John has long been one of the nations leading voices on then intersection of science and Public Policy and make no mistake however calmly reasonably expressed, is a very contrarian voice. It was johns new york time the big city which ran from the mid 90s until 2002 i think, the first may be event of his work. There he took on any number of prevailing myths about cities from the efficacy of rent control, to the roof root causes to homelessness to environmental policy and one remarkable was born from johns irritation and Rosie Odonnells relentless public criticism. Brian this was a mayor Rudy Giuliani sees Law Enforcement to get the homeless off of new york city sidewalks back in the 90s. So how was it that his hometown come the wealthy new york city doing the similar problem john wondered so he let his beard grow for a few days and he did not shower and then dressed himself up in dirty clothes and a torn parka and headed out to my a he plunked himself down and felt himself down rightms in frt of odonnells pension. And within minutes of course the Security Guard was aggressively confronting him and asking him to move along directly threatening him. As in the cops had arrived anyone of being taken down to the station. The point proved about a certain kind of hypocrisy of what we say this is virtue signaling and another distant factor that i wrote for the times, nsa, recycling is garbage. This title captures the provocative argument, and the record in the most hate mail ever generated by New York Times article. [applause]. Johns journalism appears not just in the times but in the wall street journal the clinic new york esquire Washington Post and many other leading publications as adjoining civic journal john has continued to eliminate in the range writing about among other things the country productivity of anti bathing, Public Health measures how drugs developed and why the left is actually waging the real war on science and in our latest issue, almost guaranteed to drive everybody insane is my plastic bags are in fact better for the environment than all of the alternatives. [applause]. With this piece, like his other work, again shows his talent exploding widely accepted views as healthy. The broadcasting city journal video based on johns science, it has instantly had more than 2 million views since we released it. His new book, the power of bad and is sold an impressive 350,000 copies since its release a couple of years ago. It is so popular as i was telling john you can find it at airports which is really a sign that youve got itt made. This will be true soon the power of bad. The previous book explored the psychological aspects of new will. Nineveh, it is useful, studies with psychologist called negativity biased. The human propensity to focus disproportionately on unpleasant events and emotions and bad news. Its the reason that one word of criticism can see more powerful within the paragraph as john and roy argue in this book, this irrational side to human nature has its uses. We can also be crippling and lead to actions in life and in Public Policy. The good news is that can be mastered and the power of bad shows how plaintiff i give you john tierney. [applause]. John thank you very much. Thanks brian for this kind words read it is been so great working with you as an editor. I want to thank the manhattan organization for holdings lunch and Everything Else that is done. I started writing in the colon for the New York Times, i found that this was the one voice of sanity in the policy may always urgiving the Manhattan Institute the lion share of the credit for turning around new york city. I am so impressed withed them tt i think theyre going to save us even from the current mayor. [laughter]. So today i would like to suggest how to save the rest of the world and as you may have guessed, it involves buying my book. And it said that a fundamental fact of life that is just now becoming clear to scientists is that universal tendency of that eventrs and emotions to the efft that is more strongly than good ones. And in short, that is stronger than good. That was the title of a favorite paper from a social psychologist. And since he publishes, there have been hundreds of studies looking at the negativity of impacts about all parts of my life. And in the book, we wrote this book in order to show people, how do you deal with this. And how this negativity bias in our brains as such, a romantic relationships parenting, education religion, sports, business and mass media social media, and just about Everything Else. We argue that the negativity effect underlies the most important problem in politics and Public Policy. It is a problem that is really bothering me since i got my first inkling of it. One of my first jobs in journalism. I was an intern at the philadelphia bulletin. I is the low man on the totem pole, i get the dreaded assignment of one friday night to write the weather story. It was a heat wave in philadelphia that weekend and is not exactly an unprecedented dhenomenon in july but i had to find something new to say about it. There are a lot of philadelphians going to the beach so i called the Police Station down the jersey shore and i said i would like to have some news from the desk sergeant. And he said theres nothing really going on, heavy traffic that is all. In a civil is the traffic unusually heavy. [laughter]. Any as well, no no. Its always like this on fridays in july. And i was just a young new journalism student. Some primal instinct in me told me that this is not the right answer parties. [laughter]. Soy started calling police and stations on the jersey shore, asking them is this the worst traffic you have ever seen. [laughter]. They kept telling me know, it is a friday night in july and its always like this. But finally about after a half n dozen phone calls, i hit one, the one desk sergeant said to me, well yeah, i guess its the worst ive ever seen. [laughter]. For all i knew, is the guys first weekend in the job but that did not matter. I had my need and i had my in line. In the store got great plate in the paper so i considered it a great success. Clinical. Guilty. I knew how sleazy this was. Why did i fabric is and why did my editors reward me for it. If why do people want to read these kind of stories treated sick of wondering about these tquestions in a rhythmic risk ad i kept being assigned to write about supposed crises per the population crisis, energy prices, cancer epidemic prices, the recycling crisis, and whatever i looked into them, and just kept saying that these were basically grandeur versions of my beach traffic story. The reports would find some isolated problem and then will goom hunting for some alleged expert we declare this to be a global catastrophe. It did not matter how often these doomsayers have been wrong before, they kept getting footage and just kept wondering, when we journalists keep crying wolf and what if people keep listening to us. Soy never really get a satisfying answer until i read this paper. That is stronger than good. And he wrote this after previous researchers and notice and had reported the people cared more about financial losses in about financial games. The colleges have found that a bad First Impression is muchsi more impact than good First Impression. Sorry boy wonder what gives band is power in the situations and look for examples, further situations look good was stronger. And he scoured the research and all kinds of discipline pretty and two is to price, he cannot find any examples. It stumbled onto this major phenomenon that extended into so many fields and ugly and noticed they were all pattern pretty bad was relentlessly stronger than good. As brian said, a word of as such much more impact and praise. Penalties are much more effective in promoting people in prizes. Bad employee is much more impact than is good employee. Bad parenting can seriously hurt children to being really super great parent doesnt make much difference. [laughter]. Is the good news. Bo just be a good enough you dont have to be perfect. The success of marriages, depends mainly on how spouses, not on the things to do, and depends on how the spouses relates to the negativity. We pride ourselves on how many good things we do for a family and friends and going to be a mile for our customers and our clients. But what really matters is what we dont do. Avoiding that is much more important than good. D. We dont just get much for going beyond what you promise you but you pay a big price for what you do if you fall too short. How to harness the power bad when shes full and how to overcome it when its operated and here is a rule of four. It typically takes for good things to overcome one bad thing. Severely for one meaning, you know what to make up for it by being really nice time. If you say one bad thing to your partner, a better plan a lot more than one complement to make up for it. Theres an upside to there negativity effect which is this power to motivate and teach. You can see this clearly at schools in new york and other cities in venice fired by oregon educational perform the really started at the Manhattan Institute. In a day, advocated on alternative to everybody getss a trophy philosophy of the educational establishment, the kind that was causing schools and high schools and colleges in grade school to inflict grades lland to eliminate penalties for failure. The reformers of the start of the movement called no excuses. This is where both the student and the teachers pay price for work. The results have just been astonishing. The Charter Schools like success academy. The students come from the poorest neighborhoods in new york city and they outscore every School District in the state. And its really proof, various reasons but one of the main ones is that they are harnessing the negativity effect. Theyre using prizes instead of her penalties instead of prizes to motivate kids. Kids are learning faster and more. Now the downside of the negativity effect is its power to warp our perspective and skewer our decisions. Relates to what what i consider one of the most prevalent forms of addictions which is the addiction to safety. This is why football coaches make the same stupid decision week after week. When theyre faced with fourthdown and short, the analyst tell that they should go for it. But over and over, they refuse to go for it, because they are so afraid of failure and so braid of being blamed for failure. In the book we talk about one High School Coach in arkansas functional use, he took a rational look at the numbers and he made a a decision to never punch. Even if he is on his own 1 yard line and is fourth in the 30, he goes for it. [laughter]. And his team wins the state championship year after year. Hes pretty much an outlier but you may have noticed in the super bowl, the Kansas City Chiefs coach to go for it on the fourthdown and help to win the game. I feel confident they must have read her book. [laughter]. These coaches are following the basic strategies that we advise for everyone. Use your rational brain to overcome the irrational power of bad and you personalize your anprofessional life and also in how you look at the world. By any rational standard we are the luckiest people history. Every measure of Human Welfare has been dramatically improving except for one. Hope. We are lucky but we feel cursed. The healthier and wealthier we become, the gloomier our world use. International surveys, as people in the richest convert country fo send the most pessimistic. Poverty and hunger and disease, and violence have been plummeting for most people in the United States and in europe, think they have gotten worse. We are blinded to the progress going on because of the negativity bias because we are bombarded by bad news. By what i call the crisis crisis. It is never ending of series nereats telling the public needlessly frightened and i agree. Nearly half of americans worry that they are a Family Member will die in a terrorist attack in the actual odds are actually are worse than falling the method. Children cant walk to them School Progress by themselves because her parents have been so frightened about stories about stranger danger that the actualo risk is the lower than the risk of being struck by lightning. Apocalyptic predictions have become so common, there was one survey of preteen children in american harassment the world would be like when they grow up in what europe would be like nearly one out of three of the children centered that the earth would no longer exist. This was before anybody had heard of rittenberg. Now obviously, there are some real problems in the world. The coronavirus is a new threat the city journal pointed out in a rare piece that offered somes perspective the threat to americans isiv dismissible to te threat to the ordinary flu virus. It is really novel about viruses how quickly when responding to it. You should take decades to develop a vaccine. No talking about one in several months. We dont see the progress because of our negativity bias. We focus on the scare stories and on the worstcase scenarios and we keep sayingst in the new. And that is the crisis crisis. And it is promoted by journalists and by politicians and Health Academics and activists and other special interests. Theres a whole crisis industry. The merchants of bad as i call them and you find them on both left and right sides of the border of the spectrum. They start moral panics, the smoke hears about new technologies, foreign enemies, drugs, immigrants, environmental threats, whatever will instantly trigger the brains alarm circuit spring and promote class warfare and tribalism in the employee in politics in the elect demographics. Not call them that but i dont mean theyre all in it for the money. Many of them are genuinely unarmed. The most effective dume dave theres another one to actually believe their own prophecies pretty chicken little was truly convinced the sky was falling. It wasnt her sincerity but her interpretation of the state court has fallen on her head and her plans for dealing with it. And she and the other animals sought shelters for the sky crisis by going into the den of the fox who probably made a meal of them. And that is the cautionary lesson. And it applies to the crisis crisis. There are a lot of crisis that there. They know just what emmanuel meant when they said that you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And over and over, in order from a their own careers some of the from of the policy that helps special interests and the power of Public Officials while causing harm to the rest of us. A few examples of the Energy Crisis of the 1970s, then the fear about Nuclear Power that the Construction Forces the policies that could cost creation of much more coal power plants now weor have more Carbon Dioxide in the air. In iraq we are so afraid of imagine sir imaginary danger the pretty much a self prophecy of the spray devices. And the people of thinking, had absolutely nothing to do with nicotine secretly fueled by journalists negatives code caused such a panic and had so much badup information of most americans have come to believe that ecigarettes are worse than smoking. And the result is that millions of smokers have been dissuaded from making a decision that could save their lives. What is most damaging and i could go on giving examples like the plastic panic the money talked aboubriantalked about. Is this continual crisis mono drink at least two conditioning called demo store losses. He identified as the greatest obstacle to freedom and prosperity in democratic societies. It is the clogging of the economic arteries by the gradual accumulation of favors and subsidies and regulations and the benefits of special Interest Groups can slow down Everything Else. It is also said, his death by a thousand cuts. Here in new york city for instance, developers used to be able to build homes for the middle class and the poor but today i can afford to build only for the affluent just because so many different regulations and obstacles have built up over the years. The biggest ones are the rent control rules which are 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, the regulations never went away and that is absolutely typical of what happens in the crisis chris parsons. An economist documented this in a book. What really drives government growth is an expense during a crisis and when the crisis is over, never shrinks back. Thats why see this is the greatest problem in politics. In Public Policy. Im not trying to exploit this by saying it is a brandnew threat to human survival. People have always been vulnerable to the crisis vulnerability. Within 24 7 on her screens. People have always been vulnerable. In 1918 long before the cable is in the west, lincoln described Public Discourse as a combat of crazies. Johe really truly diagnose a fundamental problem in politics. The whole aim of practical politics he said, is to keep the populace alarmed and clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an end