Cross-national evidence of a negativity bias in psychophysiological reactions to news

Stuart Soroka (), Patrick Fournier and Lilach Nir
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Stuart Soroka: Department of Communication and Media, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Patrick Fournier: Département de Science Politique, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC H3C 3J7, Canada
Lilach Nir: Department of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel; Department of Communication and Journalism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019, vol. 116, issue 38, 18888-18892

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.”

Keywords: news coverage; negativity bias; political communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nas:journl:v:116:y:2019:p:18888-18892

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