Those are the wants and fears. You can disable them in game options, but beware, they won't stay switched off. Anytime you exit the game and come back in, switch households, travel, or go into CAS wants and fears switch themselves back on. A lot of people were hoping the August patch would fix this but it didn't. Hopefully it will be fixed sooner rather than later. In the meantime if you're ok with mods there are a couple of good ones out there. MissyHissy's Hopes and Fears mod, our @83bienchen's feartweaks mod are ones I use to deal with this problem. So far they are doing a good job of keeping fears at bay. Lumpinou has a good reroll wants mod too.
