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A review by andrewhall
The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It by Roy F. Baumeister, John Tierney
3.0
Interesting journalistic reporting of psychology research on how negative events have more power over our emotions and outlook than positive events. It covers relationships, workplace interactions, online interactions, etc.
I read it for a book club. I am usually not interested in this kind of book, and I doubt I will pick up any others like it any time soon, but this one was engaging enough.
I was well into the book before I realized the authors (a social psychologist and a NYTimes science reporter) are libertarians. I think they are pretty sensible in their conclusions, but in the last chapter I had some doubts. The chapter was about how the current glut of public intellectuals incentivizes a focus on crises and bad trends, while in reality the world is getting better. I thought in general there were good points, but I disagreed on some of the specific issues they thought were being overblown. And although they did not bring up climate change, it felt like an unspoken purpose of the chapter was to imply that the dangers of climate change are being over-hyped.
I read it for a book club. I am usually not interested in this kind of book, and I doubt I will pick up any others like it any time soon, but this one was engaging enough.
I was well into the book before I realized the authors (a social psychologist and a NYTimes science reporter) are libertarians. I think they are pretty sensible in their conclusions, but in the last chapter I had some doubts. The chapter was about how the current glut of public intellectuals incentivizes a focus on crises and bad trends, while in reality the world is getting better. I thought in general there were good points, but I disagreed on some of the specific issues they thought were being overblown. And although they did not bring up climate change, it felt like an unspoken purpose of the chapter was to imply that the dangers of climate change are being over-hyped.