"Bad Is Stronger Than Good" (2001) assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.p… Every time I re-read this paper I'm struck by its insights. For example, there is no positive counterpart to trauma. Blindingly obvious, of course. And yet the implications are vast and subtle. 
Perhaps the most important relationship skill is avoiding "reciprocation of bad responses," i.e. retaliation.
In regulating mood, we can strive to induce, prolong or terminate positive and negative states. We work the hardest by far to escape from bad moods. (Yet another reason to cultivate our "comfort with discomfort." edbatista.com/2015/06/comfor…)
"The extinction of a fear response is...not a genuine case of unlearning... Once a threat is recognized, the person...will remember the threat more or less forever." (And consider how easy it is for an angry leader to evoke fear.)
We work harder to understand and explain negative events than positive ones. (And as my mentor Carole Robin always says: In the absence of data, we make shit up. Thus the importance of seeing what's not there. edbatista.com/2016/12/seeing… …)
Bad information almost always attracts more attention than good. (As I say repeatedly in my class: Emotions are attention magnets. And that's an essential feature that so often feels like a bug.)
We're more powerfully motivated to NOT be our undesired self than to be our ideal self. (And we may formulate our ideal self in response to our undesired self.)
"We must conclude that bad is stronger than good at a pervasive, general level. Let us briefly summarize the evidence."
And like so much of our emotional lives, the power of bad over good is a profoundly valuable feature that all too often feels like a bug. (This is why in my class on Unhappiness we explore Stoicism, Buddhism and Logotherapy: edbatista.com/the-art-of-sel…)
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