Abstract
Negativity bias is the tendency for negative events, stimuli, and factors to have a greater impact on an individual than neutral and/or positive counterparts. This phenomenon may impact a variety of processes, including learning, impression formation, decision making, memory, attention, and information processing. The purpose of this study was to explore how negativity bias manifests in sport. Adult competitive athletes (N = 31; 14 men, 11 women, 6 undisclosed; Mage = 28.5 years, SD = 7.40) participated in two semi-structured one-on-one interviews and were encouraged supplement interview data with audio diaries (n = 31). Audio diaries included athlete thoughts and reflections relevant to negativity bias between the two formal interviews. Within an interpretive description framework (Thorne, 2016), reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) was used to analyze the data. Engagement with the data culminated in the generation of three themes surrounding how negativity bias was manifested in sport: (1) Contagion (i.e., negative elements in sport tend to propagate negativity and can ultimately contaminate sport experiences), (2) Favourable in Memory (i.e., proneness to recall negative elements compared to positive elements, even though there may be comparably more positive elements), and (3) Seizing Attention (i.e., compared to positive stimuli and factors, negatives appear to capture and hold attention more strongly). It appears that the sport context is not exempt from the widespread prevalence of negativity bias. As such, findings from the present study may inform efforts to effectively consider and manage negativity bias in sport.
