Remember, complaints are noisier than compliments

Photo: NG KOK LEONG/The Star

MALAYSIANS have a peculiar habit. We can turn the smallest issue into a national debate. Maybe it is a symptom of living in a country where everyone has an opinion and a smartphone. Whatever the reasons, we often make mountains out of molehills. Worse still, social media allows even the tiniest of complaints to be turned into a national conversation.

Psychologists call it negativity bias – the human tendency to focus more on what goes wrong than what goes right. One bad experience overshadows 10 good ones. That’s why complaints travel faster than compliments, and a single glitch can drown out months of good performance.