I am 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 joh john tierney and coauthor with an esteemed useful new book the power of bad how the negativity effect rules us and how we can rule it it. It is on sale, by the way outside the room here. John has long been one of the leading voices on the intersection of science and Public Policy. And make no mistake, however calmly, reasonably expressed, his is a very contrary invoice. It was johns New York Times column, the big city, which ran from the mid 90s until 2002, that first made me a fan of his work. There, he took on any number of prevailing myths about cities. From the efficacy of rent control to the root causes of homelessness to environmental policy. One remarkable column was his irritation at Rosie Odonnells relentless public criticism of mayer Rudy Giulianis use of Law Enforcement to get the homeless off of new york city sidewalks back in the 90s. So how would odonnells, hometown deal with a similar problem john wondered . So he let his beard grow for a few days, he did not shower, then he dressed himself up in dirty clothes in a torn parka and headed up where he plopped himself down on the sidewalk right in front of odonnells manchin. [laughter] well within minutes of course, a Security Guard was confronting him and asking them actually threatening him to move along. Soon the cops arrived and he was then taken down to the station. Point proved about a certain kind of elite hypocrisy which these days recall virtual signaling. Another piece he wrote for the times, an essay, recycling is garbage. His titles capture the provocative argument holds the record for the most hate mail ever generated by a New York Times article. [laughter] [applause] now johns journalism has appeared not just in the times where he remains an occasional contributor, but in the wall street journal, atlantic, esquire, washington post, many other leading publications. Since joining city journal, john, has continued to illuminate an enraged writing about other things that counter productivity of anti vaping, Public Health measures, how drugs get developed in price, why the left is actually raging the real war on science. And the latest issue, a piece that is almost guaranteed to drive everyone insane, white plastic bags are in fact better for the environment than all of the alternatives. [applause] but this piece, like his other work, really again shows his talent for exploding widely accepted views as fallacies. The john stossel broadcasting city journal based on johns work science essay has incidentally had more than 2 million views since we released it. His new book, the power of bad how the negativity effect rules us and how we can rule it which was also coauthored was 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 airports, which is really a sign youve got it made. Has established true of or will be true soon, of the power of bad, the previous book explores the biological and psychological aspects of human will. The new book, i mentioned it is useful, studies what psychologists say negativity bias. The human propensity to focus disproportionately on unpleasant events and emotions, bad news. Its the reason that one word of criticism can seem more powerful to us in the paragraph of praise. As john and roy argue in this book, this is an irrational side to human nature, but it can also be crippling and lead to inimitable actions in life and a Public Policy. The good news is it can be mastered and the power of bad shows how. But i do not want to anticipate john stott, so without more for me, i give you john tierney. Thank you. [applause] guest thanks very much, thank you very much brian for those kind words it has been great working with you as an editor. I want to thank the Manhattan Institute for holding this lunch and also for Everything Else theyve done. When i started writing the big city column for the New York Times, i found this was the one voice of sanity on urban policy. I have always given city journal and the Manhattan Institute the lions share of credit for turning around new york city. And i am so impressed with them, that i think theyre going to save us even from. [inaudible] [laughter] today i would like to suggest how to save the rest of the world. Missions as you may have guessed, that you all need to buy my book. The power of bad is about the fact of life thats just now becoming clear to sciences. The universal tendency of bad events and bad emotions to affect us more strongly. In short, bad is stronger than good. That was a titled a famous paper of my coauthor, since he published it, there have been hundreds of studies looking at the negativities impact on just about all parts of our life. In the book we wrote this book in order to show people how to deal with that and how does negativity bias in our brains affect our romantic relationships, parenting, religion, sports, business, you know 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. Its a problem that has really bothered me since i got my first inkling of it and want to my first jobs in journalism when i was a summer intern at the philadelphia bulletin. Now his low man on the totem pole i got the dread assignment one friday night to write the weather story there is a heat wave in philadelphia that weekend, which is not exactly, an unprecedented phenomenon in july. But i had to find something new to say about it. So, there were a lot of philadelphians going to the beach so i called the Police Station down at the jersey sure and i begged for some news from the desk sergeant he said really nothing going on, we have heavy traffic, thats all. I said was the traffic and usually heavy . [laughter] and he goes zero no no, its always like this on fridays. In july. Now as i said, i was a young reporter very inexpensive that point. Some primal journalistic instinct told me that this was not the right answer. [laughter] so i started calling Police Stations up and down the jersey shore asking them is this the worst traffic youve ever seen . [laughter] and they kept till me know, its a friday night in july its always like this. So finally about a half dozen phone calls, i hit pater. The one desk sergeant said to me well, i guess it is the worst ive ever seen. [laughter] now for all i knew it was the guys first week on the job. [laughter] but that did not matter. I had my lead, and i had my headline. In the story got great play in the paper so i considered it really a great success. But i also felt guilty. I know how sleazy this was. I wondered why did i fabricate this beach traffic crisis, you know . Why did my editor reward me for . Why did people want to read this kind of story . So i kept wondering about these questions and the rest of my career. I kept being assigned to write about suppose and crises. The population crisis the Energy Crisis the kansas epidemic crisis the recycling crisis, whenever i looked into them, i just kept saying that these are basically grand diversions of my beach story. The reporters were trying some isolated problem and then they would go hunting for some alleged expert that would declare this the omen of a global catastrophe. You know, it didnt matter how often these doomsday airs have been wrong before. They kept getting quoted. I just kept wondering, why dont we, journalist, keep crying wolf . Why do people keep listening to us . So i never could get a satisfied answer and till i read Roy Baumeister paper, bad is stronger than good. After previous researchers had noticed and reported that you people cared more about financial losses than financial gains, the colleges had found that a bad First Impression has much more impact than a good First Impression. And so roy wondered, what gives vat its power in those situations. He looks for counterexamples for other situations were good was strong. And he scoured the research and just all kinds of disciplines, and to his surprise, he could not find any counterexamples. But come by accident almost he stumbled onto this major phenomenon that extended into so many fields, that nobody had noticed the overall pattern. Bad was relentlessly stronger than good. As brian said, word of criticism has so much more impact than praise. Penalties are much more effective in motivating people than prizes. A bad employee has much more impact than good employee. Bad parenting can seriously hurt children, but being a really super great parent doesnt make much difference. [laughter] thats good news. In the book we talk about being a good enough parent you dont have to be perfect. And the success of marriages, depends mainly on how spouses assign the good things to do it depends mainly on how spouses deal with negativity and that holds through another relationships. We pride ourselves on many good things we do for our family and friends and going the extra mile for our customers and for our clients but what really matters is that we do not do. Avoiding the bad is much more important than doing good. You dont get much extra credit all for going have promised that you pay a big price for falling short. John in the book we explain how to harness the power of bad when its useful and how to overcome it when it is not. We offer guidelines like the rule of four which is as rough guideline but is pretty useful and typically takes four good things to go overcome one bad thing. So if youre late for one meeting, you will make up for it but being early the next f time. If they won her full thing to your partner, you better plan on more than one complement. Negativity effect, as its power to warp our perspective and skew our decisions. It leads to it roy and i consider the most prevalent form of addiction which is in addiction to safety. This is why football coaches make the same stupid decision week after week. They are faced with forethought in short, the analyst tells them they should go for. But over and over they refuse to go for, they punch because they are so afraid of failure and so afraid of being blamed for failure. Now in the book we talk about one High School Coach in arkansas, who actually use it took a rational look at the numbers and he made a decision never to punt. Even if hes on his own 1 yard line, he goes for it. [laughter]. And his team wins a state championship. Year after year. Now he is still pretty much know where they may have noticed in the super bowl that the kansas city chiefs, how she did go for it in the fourth down and itel helped him win again. I feel confident. Now these coaches are following the basic strategies that we involved or invite for everyone. That use your rational brain to overcome the irrational power of that when you personal life and your part of it for personal life. And also how you look at the world. I any rational standards, we are the luckiest people in history. Every measure of Human Welfare has been dramatically improving except for one. Hope. We are lucky that we feel cursed. The healthier and wealthier we become gloomier art world view. An International World survey is the people who are in the poverty and hunger and p diseas, and violence has been plummeting most people in United States and europe things have gotten worse. We are blinded to the progress going on because of the negativity bias and because were just bombarded by bad news but what i call the crisis crisis. Never ending series of heightened threats that leave the public needlessly frightened and angry. And nearly half of americans, they worry that they or a family member, will die in a terrorist attack. You might say for rather than to climb into your bathtub. The children can walk to themselves by themselves for school or to playgrounds by them selves, because it stranger danger. The actual risk is lower than the risk of being struck by lightning. Apocalyptic predictions, have become so common. There was one survey of preteens, children in america who were asked what the world would be like when they grow up. Nearly one out of three of the children said they feared that the earth with no longer exist. This was before anyone had heard of greta. Now obviously, there are some real problems in thesl world. The coronavirus for instance is a new threat. But the city journal just pointed out the new rare piece that offered some perspective, it is just minuscule to the threats of the ordinary flu virus. Was really noble about this is hihow quickly we are respondingo it. It used to take decades to develop a vaccine. Now theyre talking about one in several months. But we dont see that part because our brains have a negativity bias. If you focus on this scarcity in the were scarce scenarios that we keep seeing in the news. That is a crisis crisis. It is promoted by journalists, by politicians. How help of activists and other special s interests. Theres a whole crisis industry. Merchants of bad is what i call them. And you find month of the left and right of the political spectrum. They start moral panics and the stoke fears about new technologies, foreign enemies and drunks and immigrants environmental threats, what ever will trigger the brains alarm circuits. Tribalism, the poison politics. I dont mean theyre all bad. Many of them are genuinely unharmed. Most of active o doomsayers actually believe their own prophecies. Chicken little was truly convinced the sky was falling. The issue is not her sincerity in her interpretation of the state court this falling on her head. And plans for dealing with it. She and theit other animals that felt sought shelter by going into the den of the fox to promptly made a meal of them. That is the lesson from their table that is also applies to the crisis crisis. There are a lot of hungry foxes out there and they know just what emmanuel meant when he said you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Over and over, the hype the threats read they do this throughout their own careers and tromote policies that help the special interests and largely in part of the Public Officials while causing general harm to the rest of us. The Energy Crisis of the 1970s, and the Nuclear Power fear led to the policies that caused a creation of was more coal power plants. The result now is that we have more carbon denied site in the air. Massive destruction fear now that we fought the chaos to lot of real dangers that is happening. Last summer, muchpublicized depths of people from aging, actually nothing to do with nicotine ecigarette like joule but journalists and activists caused such a panic and put up so much information that most of americans believe that ecigarettes are worse than smoking. In the result is that many of smokers have been dissuaded from making this to save lives. But what is most damaging, and i can give you more examples. Like the plastic panic. But what is really most damaging about the crisis crisis is not one thing. Is the accumulative impact. This continual crisis monitoring leads to the condition. The brilliant economist identified as the greatest obstacle of freedom and prosperity in the democratic society. But it is is that clogging of the economic arteries by the gradual accumulation of favors and subsidies and regulations, the benefits of special Interest Groups have slowed down everything b else. And as olson said in the death by a thousand cuts. The developers used to be able to build homes from middle class and poor. Today they can afford because the many different regulations and obstacles built up over the years. In the biggest obstacles are the rent control rules which have originally passed at the end of role world war ii hasnt every measure in response to a housing. But after the war ended, after athe emergency ended, the regulations never wentnd away. Thats absolutely typical of what happens in the crisis crisis. The economist robert higgs, the documented this in hisst book called crisis, and he shows what really drives government growth as it expands during the crisis. And when the crisis is over, and never strengthens back to its former size. Now that is why i see the crisis crisis is really the greatest problem in Public Policy and politics. Although, i am not trying to exploit the negativity effect by telling you it is a friend new threats to human survival. And people have always been vulnerable to the crisis monitoring. It is especially intense. We just 824 seven under screens. The people have always been vulnerable. Long before cable news in the west, journalists described Public Discourse is a come at a crisis. He really diagnosed fundamental problems. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populist alarmed and hence led to be safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins and most of them imaginary. And this is a tough fall. This will always be with g us. The negativity bias, wired into our brains and i certainly dont expect the my public journalists and the other merchants are going to put themselves out of the business voluntarily. But there are ways to deal with it. We propose that some policies that will reduce some of the financial prophets of dume. We think that the rise of social media is very promising alternatives contrary contrary to what youve heard. S social media is actually less negative the mass media. I think we canas use that to gon what i call and no bad diet. [laughter]. And however you get your news, we advise looking at the news today and keep three principles in mind if its a crisis crisis. Number one, the world will always seem to be t in crisis. Number two, the crisis is never as bad as it sounds. Number three the solution could easily make things worse. Now be happy to go into more detail and i just want to make sure that ils do not end on a negative note here myself. [laughter]. For all of the problems that we h