Negative emotions are more noticeable to us because attending to negative events is often more important to our survival than dealing with positive events. The worst outcome when you delay a reaction to a positive event—for example, a birthday, a promotion, or a wedding—is that you celebrate a little later than you normally would have. However, with a negative event, there are much worse things that can happen if our reactions are delayed. It seems quite appropriate that we focus on dealing with negative things first