Negative Affectivity

People who express high negative affectivity view themselves and a variety of aspects of the world around them in generally negative terms. Negative affectivity is strongly related to life satisfaction. Individuals high in negative affect will exhibit, on average, higher levels of distress, anxiety, and dissatisfaction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_affectivity cf Dispositional affect

There are many instruments that can be used to measure negative affectivity, including measures of related concepts, such as neuroticism and trait anxiety. Two frequently used are:

• PANAS – The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule incorporates a 10-item negative affect scale. The PANAS-X is an expanded version of PANAS that incorporates negative affect subscales for Fear, Sadness, Guilt, Hostility, and Shyness.*
• I-PANAS-SF – The International Positive and Negative Affect Schedule Short Form is an extensively validated brief, cross-culturally reliable 10-item version of the PANAS. Negative Affect items are Afraid, Ashamed, Hostile, Nervous and Upset.... The I-PANAS-SF was developed to eliminate redundant and ambiguous items and thereby derive an efficient measure for general use in research situations where either time or space are limited

Studies have indicated that negative affect has important, beneficial impacts on cognition and behavior. These developments were a departure from earlier psychological research, which was characterized by a unilateral emphasis on the benefits of positive affect. Both states of affect influence mental processes and behavior.

people with negative affect tend to perform better in instances involving deception, manipulation, impression formation, and stereotyping. Negative affectivity's analytical and detailed processing of information leads to fewer reconstructive-memory errors

People are notoriously susceptible to forming inaccurate judgments based on biases and limited information. Evolutionary theories propose that negative affective states tend to increase skepticism and decrease reliance on preexisting knowledge

First impressions are one of the most basic forms of judgments people make on a daily basis; yet judgment formation is a complex and fallible process. Negative affect is shown to decrease errors in forming impressions based on presuppositions. One common judgment error is the halo effect, or the tendency to form unfounded impressions of people based on known but irrelevant information

These findings complement evolutionary psychology theories that affective states serve adaptive functions in promoting suitable cognitive strategies to deal with environmental challenges. Positive affect is associated with assimilative, top-down processing used in response to familiar, benign environments. Negative affect is connected with accommodative, bottom-up processing in response to unfamiliar, or problematic environments.