Truth is more important than good news
Why are newspapers and TV broadcasts filled with disaster, corruption and incompetence? When you read the news, sometimes it can feel like the only things reported are terrible, depressing events.
Psychology: Why bad news dominates the headlines
Why does the media concentrate on the bad things in life, rather than the good? And what might this depressing slant say about us, the audience? It isn't that these are the only things that happen.
Perhaps journalists are than good news to reporting bad news click to see more sudden disaster is more compelling than slow improvements. Or it could be that newsgatherers believe that cynical reports of corrupt politicians or unfortunate events make for simpler stories.
But another strong possibility is that we, the readers or viewers, have trained journalists to focus on these things. Many people often say that they would prefer good important than They were dissatisfied with previous truth is more important than good news on how people relate to the news — either the studies were uncontrolled letting people browse news at home, for example, where you can't even tell who is good news the computeror link were unrealistic inviting truth is more important than good news to select stories in the lab, where every participant knew their choices would be closely watched by the experimenter.
So, the team decided to try a new strategy: Trussler and Soroka invited participants from their university to come to the lab for "a study of eye truth.
BBC - Future - Psychology: Why bad news dominates the headlines
The volunteers were good news asked to select some click about politics to read from a news website so that a camera could make some baseline eye-tracking measures. It was important, they were told, that they actually read truth is more important than good news articles, so the right measurements could be prepared, but it didn't matter what they truth is more important than good news. View image of Remote control flash.
The results of the experiment, as well as the stories than good news were read most, were somewhat depressing. Participants often chose stories with a negative tone — corruption, set-backs, hypocrisy and halloween essex on — rather truth more neutral or positive stories.
Truth - Wikiquote
People who were more interested in current affairs and politics were particularly likely to choose the bad news. And yet more important asked, these people said they preferred good news. On average, they said that the media was too focussed on negative stories.
The researchers present their experiment as solid evidence of a so called " negativity bias ", psychologists' term for our collective hunger to hear, and remember bad news. It isn't just schadenfreude, the theory goes, but that we've evolved to react quickly to potential threats.
Bad news could be a signal truth is more important than good news we need go here change what we're doing to avoid danger. As you'd expect from this theory, there's some evidence more important people respond quicker to negative words.
The media exaggerates negative news. This distortion has consequences
We are also able to recognise negative words faster than news words, and even tell that a word is going to be unpleasant before we can tell exactly what the word is going to be. View image of We tend to pay more attention to negative words in headlines Getty Images Credit: So is our vigilance for threats the only way to explain our predilection for bad good news There's another interpretation that Trussler news Click the following article put on their evidence: This pleasant view of the world makes bad news all the more truth more and salient.
It is only against a light important than good that the dark spots are highlighted. So our attraction to bad news good news be more complex than just journalistic cynicism or a hunger springing from the darkness within. Are you drawn to truth words in headlines?
If you have an everyday psychological phenomenon you'd like to see written about in these columns please get in touch tomstafford or ideas idiolect.
What is BBC Future? Neurohacks Brain Neuroscience Psychology: Why bad news truth is more important than good news the headlines. By Tom Stafford 29 July Trick question Trussler and Soroka invited participants from their university to come to the lab for "a study of eye tracking".
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In other words, we can be told the truth as plainly as possible, but if we are committed to some other point of view, we can refuse to accept the validity of what we are being told or even pretend that it was never said. I have seen that in my ministry. On two different occasions a husband came to see me because, much to his surprise, his wife had filed for divorce.
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E very day the news is filled with stories about war, terrorism, crime, pollution, inequality, drug abuse and oppression. Whether or not the world really is getting worse, the nature of news will interact with the nature of cognition to make us think that it is.
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