** Most people assume negative intentions with hard feedback **

When someone brings us bad news, we assume the bearer of bad news has malevolent intentions. We don't realize that people are going to assume the worst when we have bad news for them. There's a great study by Leslie John who made it completely random. She had people draw a little slip of paper and her research assistant would draw a number out of a bag. When you say out loud, oh, you know what, I drew a three and that person doesn't get money,. That person assumes that you tried to draw the wrong number. Can you believe this? It's totally random. And yet you somehow assume negative intentions on their part, even though it's random.