IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nas/journl/v116y2019p18888-18892.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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)

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.”

Suggested Citation

  • Stuart Soroka & Patrick Fournier & Lilach Nir, 2019. "Cross-national evidence of a negativity bias in psychophysiological reactions to news," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116(38), pages 18888-18892, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:nas:journl:v:116:y:2019:p:18888-18892
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.pnas.org/content/116/38/18888.full
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shesen Guo & Ganzhou Zhang, 2020. "Using Machine Learning for Analyzing Sentiment Orientations Toward Eight Countries," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(3), pages 21582440209, August.
    2. Fulian Yin & Meiqi Ji & Zhongliang Yang & Zhaoliang Wu & Xinyu Xia & Tongtong Xing & Yuwei She & Zhiwen Hu, 2022. "Exploring the determinants of global vaccination campaigns to combat COVID-19," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-13, December.
    3. Spampatti, Tobia & Hahnel, Ulf J.J. & Trutnevyte, Evelina & Brosch, Tobias, 2022. "Short and long-term dominance of negative information in shaping public energy perceptions: The case of shallow geothermal systems," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    4. Abdou, Rawayda & Cassells, Damien & Berrill, Jenny & Hanly, Jim, 2022. "Revisiting the relationship between economic uncertainty and suicide: An alternative approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 306(C).
    5. Miloš Fišar & Tommaso Reggiani & Fabio Sabatini & Jiří Špalek, 2022. "Media negativity bias and tax compliance: experimental evidence," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 29(5), pages 1160-1212, October.
    6. Terre Satterfield & Sara Nawaz & Guillaume Peterson St-Laurent, 2023. "Exploring public acceptability of direct air carbon capture with storage: climate urgency, moral hazards and perceptions of the ‘whole versus the parts’," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 176(2), pages 1-21, February.
    7. Steven Buigut and Burcu Kapar, 2022. "Do COVID-19 Incidence and Government Intervention Influence Media Indices?," Bulletin of Applied Economics, Risk Market Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 79-100.
    8. Thomas, Melanee & DeCillia, Brooks & Santos, John B. & Thorlakson, Lori, 2022. "Great expectations: Public opinion about energy transition," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    9. Claire E. Robertson & Nicolas Pröllochs & Kaoru Schwarzenegger & Philip Pärnamets & Jay J. Bavel & Stefan Feuerriegel, 2023. "Negativity drives online news consumption," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(5), pages 812-822, May.
    10. Kyriopoulos, Ilias-Ioannis & Vandoros, Sotiris & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2023. "State-level economic uncertainty and cardiovascular disease deaths: evidence from the United States," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120679, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Fišar, Miloš & Reggiani, Tommaso G. & Sabatini, Fabio & Špalek, Jiří, 2020. "Media Bias and Tax Compliance: Experimental Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 12938, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Julienne, Hannah & Poluektova, Olga & Robertson, Deirdre & Braiden, Aoife & Lunn, Pete, 2022. "Primacy effects in the formation of opinions on an unfamiliar environmental topic: Experimental evidence from mineral exploration and mining," Papers WP741, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    13. Reuben Ng, 2021. "Societal Age Stereotypes in the U.S. and U.K. from a Media Database of 1.1 Billion Words," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-10, August.
    14. Daniel Arturo Cernas-Ortiz & Lau Wai-Kwan, 2021. "Social connectedness and job satisfaction in Mexican teleworkers during the pandemic: the mediating role of affective well-being," Estudios Gerenciales, Universidad Icesi, vol. 37(158), pages 37-48, March.
    15. Sias, Richard & Starks, Laura T. & Turtle, H.J., 2023. "The negativity bias and perceived return distributions: Evidence from a pandemic," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 627-657.
    16. Henrik Serup Christensen & Lauri Rapeli, 2021. "Immediate rewards or delayed gratification? A conjoint survey experiment of the public’s policy preferences," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 54(1), pages 63-94, March.
    17. Sally V. Russell & Neal M. Ashkanasy, 2021. "Pulling on Heartstrings: Three Studies of the Effectiveness of Emotionally Framed Communication to Encourage Workplace Pro-Environmental Behavior," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-20, September.
    18. Goldman, Eitan & Martel, Jordan & Schneemeier, Jan, 2022. "A theory of financial media," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 239-258.
    19. Aassve,Arnstein & Capezzone,Tommaso & Cavalli,Nicolo’ & Conzo,Pierluigi & Peng,Chen, 2022. "Trust in the time of coronavirus: longitudinal evidence from the United States," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 202203, University of Turin.
    20. Dehler-Holland, Joris & Schumacher, Kira & Fichtner, Wolf, 2021. "Topic Modeling Uncovers Shifts in Media Framing of the German Renewable Energy Act," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 2(1).
    21. Kaklauskas, A. & Bardauskiene, D. & Cerkauskiene, R. & Ubarte, I. & Raslanas, S. & Radvile, E. & Kaklauskaite, U. & Kaklauskiene, L., 2021. "Emotions analysis in public spaces for urban planning," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    22. Zoe Ziyi Ng & Grace Li & Suzanne Flynn & W. Quin Yow, 2023. "How COVID-19 News Affect Older Adults’ Mental Health—Evidence of a Positivity Bias," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(5), pages 1-14, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nas:journl:v:116:y:2019:p:18888-18892. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Eric Cain (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.pnas.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.