The Five-to-One Discovery

Rea,

You know I was recently reading a book called “The Power of Bad.” One of the key ideas from the book is that we value bad things more than good things. That sounds counterintuitive, right? Why would we focus on the negative stuff? It’s like how you might remember the one question you missed on a math test more than the ones you got right.

In 1984, psychologist Thomas Gilovich decided to measure exactly how much more we focus on the bad than the good. He set up a clever experiment with basketball coaches, asking them to watch recordings of their team’s games and note what they remembered most. The results were striking. The coaches remembered the missed shots and errors more than successful plays.

Through careful measurement, Gilovich discovered that it takes about five positive experiences to mentally outweigh one negative experience. This became known as the “negativity bias ratio.” When a player missed one shot, it took five successful baskets to make up for it in the coach’s memory.

As a result, many coaches changed how they trained their teams. Instead of only pointing out mistakes, they started deliberately celebrating successes five times more often. They created highlight reels of great plays alongside the error clips. Some coaches even instituted a rule: for every correction, they had to give five specific compliments.

The impact was remarkable. Teams that applied the 5:1 ratio saw their performance improve by as much as 31%. Players who received this balanced feedback became more confident and took more of the right kinds of risks, often outperforming teams with similar talent but traditional coaching approaches.This discovery has spread far beyond sports. Teachers now give five pieces of positive feedback for every correction. Companies train managers to follow the same ratio with employees.

Understanding this pattern helps in everyday life too. When you get back a test with one wrong answer, your brain might zoom in on that mistake and ignore all the right answers. When you make one error during a music recital, that moment might feel more important than all the beautiful parts you played perfectly.

This negativity bias is part of being human. Our brains evolved this way to keep us safe from dangers. But now that we know about it, we can balance things out by deliberately paying more attention to what goes right. Like a scale that needs five good weights to balance one bad one, we can tip the balance toward positivity.

Love, Abba

P.S. Next time you’re nervous before a big test, try counting five things you’ve done well in your preparation. It might help balance out that one worried thought!