Abstract
What accounts for the prevalence of negative news content? One answer may lie in the tendency for humans to react more strongly to negative than positive information. “Negativity biases” in human cognition and behavior are well documented, but existing research is based on small Anglo-American samples and stimuli that are only tangentially related to our political world. This work accordingly reports results from a 17-country, 6-continent experimental study examining psychophysiological reactions to real video news content. Results offer the most comprehensive cross-national demonstration of negativity biases to date, but they also serve to highlight considerable individual-level variation in responsiveness to news content. Insofar as our results make clear the pervasiveness of negativity biases on average, they help account for the tendency for audience-seeking news around the world to be predominantly negative. Insofar as our results highlight individual-level variation, however, they highlight the potential for more positive content, and suggest that there may be reason to reconsider the conventional journalistic wisdom that “if it bleeds, it leads.”
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 18888-18892 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
| Volume | 116 |
| Issue number | 38 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 17 Sep 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Vin Arceneaux, Chris Dawes, Johanna Dunaway, John Hibbing, Peter John Loewen, and Daniel Rubenson. We thank research coordinators and research assistants at our own and other institutions: Saja Abu-Fani, Maxim Alyukov, Jeremy Adrian, Thiago Barbosa, Alexandre Blanchet, Danin Chen, Yolanda Clatworthy, Lou d’Angelo, Danlin Chen, Veronica Dazzan, Fatou Diop, Thomas Donovan, Marie Fly, Nicole Gileadi, Amanda Hampton, Matthias Heilke, Emma Heffernan, John Jensenius, Gonoi Ken, Saga Khaghani, Robert Lee Vidigal, Ling Liu, Sofie Lovbjerg, Eleonora Marchetti, Radhika Mitra, Alex Nevitte, Hiroki Ogawa, Vijeta Pamnani, Shang Pan, Amma Panin, Shang Pan, Andres Parado, Heidi Payter, Martina Perversi, Felipe Torres Raposo, Tea Rosic, Autumn Szczepanski, Alassane Sow, Dominic Valentino, Omer Yair, and Kirill Zhirkov. We have relied on colleagues to help facilitate experiments abroad and owe special thanks to Michael Bang Petersen, Sharon Barnhardt, Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom, Fatou Binetou Dial, Ray Duch, Vladimir Gelman, Peiran Jiao, Masaru Kohno, Neils Markwat, Johan Martinsson, Gianpietro Mazzoleni, Elin Naurin, Nicholas Sauger, Sergio Splendore, Nurit Tal-Or, Yariv Tsfati, Mathieu Turgeon, and Jack Vowles. Experiments were run by using purpose-built software by Bennett Smith, first designed for work with Stephen McAdams and Elisabeth Gidengil; and preliminary work depended on laboratory space and funding from the Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship and from the Hebrew University Halbert Center. This work was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada.
Funding Information:
We thank conference participants and colleagues for remarks, some of which were fundamental to the study; in particular, Vin Arceneaux, Chris Dawes, Johanna Dunaway, John Hibbing, Peter John Loewen, and Daniel Rubenson. We thank research coordinators and research assistants at our own and other institutions: Saja Abu-Fani, Maxim Alyukov, Jeremy Adrian, Thiago Barbosa, Alexandre Blanchet, Danin Chen, Yolanda Clatworthy, Lou d’Angelo, Danlin Chen, Veronica Dazzan, Fatou Diop, Thomas Donovan, Marie Fly, Nicole Gileadi, Amanda Hampton, Matthias Heilke, Emma Heffernan, John Jensenius, Gonoi Ken, Saga Khaghani, Robert Lee Vidigal, Ling Liu, Sofie Lovbjerg, Eleonora Marchetti, Radhika Mitra, Alex Nevitte, Hiroki Ogawa, Vijeta Pamnani, Shang Pan, Amma Panin, Shang Pan, Andres Parado, Heidi Payter, Martina Perversi, Felipe Torres Raposo, Tea Rosic, Autumn Szczepanski, Alassane Sow, Dominic Valentino, Omer Yair, and Kirill Zhirkov. We have relied on colleagues to help facilitate experiments abroad and owe special thanks to Michael Bang Petersen, Sharon Barnhardt, Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom, Fatou Binetou Dial, Ray Duch, Vladimir Gelman, Peiran Jiao, Masaru Kohno, Neils Markwat, Johan Martinsson, Gianpietro Mazzoleni, Elin Naurin, Nicholas Sauger, Sergio Splendore, Nurit Tal-Or, Yariv Tsfati, Mathieu Turgeon, and Jack Vowles. Experiments were run by using purpose-built software by Bennett Smith, first designed for work with Stephen McAdams and Elisabeth Gidengil; and preliminary work depended on laboratory space and funding from the Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship and from the Hebrew University Halbert Center. This work was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Keywords
- Negativity bias
- News coverage
- Political communication