Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion
Are We Doomed to Be Negative Nellies? The Negativity Bias, Dominance and Contagion Effect.

This article explores literary, historical, religious, and cultural evidence for the negativity bias, hypothesizing that there is a general bias toward negative entities. The authors suggest that negative entities are more contagious than positive entities, making negative events more dominant.

Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion

The original article hypothesizing that there is a general bias toward negative entities. The authors explore how negative entities are stronger than the equivalent positive entities, the negativity of negative events grows more rapidly then the positivity of positive events, we give more weight to negative entities even when presented with equivalent positive entities, and negative entities are more varied, yield more complex conceptual representations, and engage a wider response repertoire. The consider a variety of theoretical accounts for the negativity bias; one feature being that negative entities are more contagious than positive entities.

Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and social psychology review, 5(4), 296-320.