On the lower end of the scale are negative words such as mad, hate, no, boo, smoke and jail, as well as a colorful and thorough assortment of expletives.

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In last year's fight for the Democratic nomination to be governor of California, the candidate who went negative lost on a grand scale.

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"Today's black dolls have evolved from negative caricatures to play-scale representations of haute couture fashion models and other positive images of babies, toddlers and adult black people, " says Garrett.

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The scale ranges from negative one to positive one.

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The difference in social attitudes toward the rich between mature and Central and Eastern European markets is 2.5 points on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being very negative and 10 being very positive.

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The firm's BrandIndex service surveyed two slices of the U.S. population, adults 18 to 34 and those over 35, to discover if their perception of the Facebook brand has grown more positive or negative over the past few weeks and rating the results on a scale of -100 to 100.

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The harm-avoidance scale is a measure of a person's reaction to negative or frightening stimuli.

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Although there have been some recent headlines highlighting the negative sentiment in the U.S. economy, I believe the scale deserves to be a bit more balanced.

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