Words convey a lot, and can make all the difference in a person’s attitude. Positive words like generous and happy have a strong effect on people’s mood. Negative words like cruel and mean can cause others to feel depressed and angry.
Previous research has examined the spread of emotional language in situations that evoked both predominantly negative and positive emotions, finding that negativity tends to spread further.
1. “It’s not fair”
Unfairness is when something doesn’t seem right or just. For example, if your mom gives you more ice cream than she does to your brother, you might say it’s not fair.
Our results show that negative words spread faster than positive ones. They also highlight how moralized language can amplify their effect. This could be because they carry more information than their counterparts.
2. “It’s not right”
A small number of personality adjectives, such as overprotective and over-sensitive, can be transformed into their negative counterparts by adding a prefix. Hence, positive words carry less information than their negative counterparts.
Gaming fans of scrabble word finder use more positive than negative words per 1,000. Because they love their games and feel virtuous when they win. The same goes for Rihanna’s fanbase, who overwhelmingly use positive language.
3. “It’s not funny”
The phrase “It’s not funny” is an acceptable and common written English expression. You may use it to say that someone’s words, actions, or writing weren’t humorous. An illustrative phrase might be “The joke you told at the party was not funny at all.”
4. “It’s wrong”
A positive outlook can help us see the best in people and situations. However, a pessimistic approach can often be more destructive to our mood and wellbeing.
For example, when the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is legal in all states, searches for “love wins” were among the most popular. This is because the decision evoked positive moral emotions. These searches led to increased news consumption.
5. “It’s not good”
The addition of negative words — harm, heartbroken, ugly, troubling, angry — in headlines correlated with an average 2.3% increase in click-through rates. Adding positive words like benefit, laughed, pretty, favorite, and kind decreased click-throughs.
When it comes to expressing emotions, human languages have a clear bias towards positive language. This may help optimize information transfer between humans. But it also raises concerns about the spread of misinformation and polarization on social media.