We already know that negative emotions can impact our impressions of situations in general, but did you know that it can actually effect how we trust others? Trust is often considered an important lubrication of maintaining a healthy social life, and a recent study showed that negative emotions directly impact how much we trust others. The study showed that when someone was threatened with a negative experience, they were less likely to trust others when compared to those who were not faced with those same negative experiences.
Key Takeaways:
- Charles Darwin notes on one of his bad days where he was moody that those days were days he only lives to make blunders.
- Trust is one of the fabric on which society is formed, from families to government, and that is why some scientists from Zurich set out to study it.
- It was found from studies that when we have negative emotions, we become less trusting even if those emotions are incidental and unrelated to our present circumstances.
“Negative moods can impair our associative memory, alter our judgments of others by making us more prone to stereotyping and forming less favorable impressions, and even lead us to feel more pain.”