You see, for much of its history, psychology has focused much attention on the negative. Hmmm… might we say the same about safety programs? But I digress.
Remember Dr. Freud? According to the good Doktor, we are driven by unconscious impulses, most of which are pretty unpleasant (at least to others). We are fundamentally selfish, thanks to the pleasure drives of the Id. Other influential theories that psychologists have subscribed to, like behaviorism, are perhaps not as problem-driven and “dark†as the psychoanalytic approach, but they still aim more at what is wrong than what is right. There are problems (naturally), and we have to rely on trained experts to fix them. Just like in safety.