This reminds me of Mr. Rogers’ “Freddish,” or his specific way of talking to children. One of his principles was this exact point: only phrase things in the positive. Thus, rather than saying, “Don’t cross the street by yourself,” word it more like, “Ask an adult before crossing the street.” There were several other components to Freddish, like emphasizing the benefits of listening to adults and praising the child for their compliance, but “phrasing things in the positive” was the one that stuck the most in my mind, and is the most germane to this discussion.
(I think I’ve also heard something similar regarding e.g. warning signs, that positive statements like “Stay away from the wires” are more effective than negative statements, like “Don’t touch the wires,” because your brain basically ignores the negative part of it. “*mumble mumble* touch the wires? Don’t mind if I do!”)
The wires one immediately sounds very plausible. I think its because “stay away from the wires” gives me a clear instruction I can immediately start following. “Don’t touch the wires” instead gets logged away as something I will hopefully remember if I start thinking about the wires again.
There seems to be a body of evidence supporting the idea that positive statements require less cognitive load to process than negative statements. These are a couple of examples I could pull up:
I remember in a Tali Sharot talk, sorry I can’t remember the specific one, where she noted it was easier to get people to press a button at the right time when an incentive is offered than it is to dissuade people from pressing a button with a penalty. Which broadly seems corroborated by Skinnerian “Schedules of Reinforcement” research.
positive statements like “Stay away from the wires” are more effective than negative statements, like “Don’t touch the wires,” because your brain basically ignores the negative part of it. “*mumble mumble* touch the wires? Don’t mind if I do!”
That’s what I was going for with
When reading or hearing a negation used in language, you must first process the positive form it contains to understand the entire statement. For example, to understand “the sky is not green”, you must first understand “the sky is green”, then negate it. Usually, this happens quickly and subconsciously, but it can harmfully slow down or weaken understanding by making you first consider a false idea.
This reminds me of Mr. Rogers’ “Freddish,” or his specific way of talking to children. One of his principles was this exact point: only phrase things in the positive. Thus, rather than saying, “Don’t cross the street by yourself,” word it more like, “Ask an adult before crossing the street.” There were several other components to Freddish, like emphasizing the benefits of listening to adults and praising the child for their compliance, but “phrasing things in the positive” was the one that stuck the most in my mind, and is the most germane to this discussion.
(I think I’ve also heard something similar regarding e.g. warning signs, that positive statements like “Stay away from the wires” are more effective than negative statements, like “Don’t touch the wires,” because your brain basically ignores the negative part of it. “*mumble mumble* touch the wires? Don’t mind if I do!”)
The wires one immediately sounds very plausible. I think its because “stay away from the wires” gives me a clear instruction I can immediately start following. “Don’t touch the wires” instead gets logged away as something I will hopefully remember if I start thinking about the wires again.
There seems to be a body of evidence supporting the idea that positive statements require less cognitive load to process than negative statements. These are a couple of examples I could pull up:
https://doi.org/10.1037/mac0000057
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10979-007-9103-y
I remember in a Tali Sharot talk, sorry I can’t remember the specific one, where she noted it was easier to get people to press a button at the right time when an incentive is offered than it is to dissuade people from pressing a button with a penalty. Which broadly seems corroborated by Skinnerian “Schedules of Reinforcement” research.
That’s what I was going for with