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

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."

SUBMITTER: Soroka S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6754543 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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

Soroka Stuart S Fournier Patrick P Nir Lilach L

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20190903 38

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 reaction ...[more]

PMID: 31481621

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Project description:Background: Adequate adaptation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is crucial in potentially life-threatening situations. The defence cascade provides a descriptive model of progressing dominant physiological reactions in such situations, including cardiovascular parameters and body mobility. The empirical evidence for this model is scarce, and the influence of physiological reactions in this model for predicting trauma-induced intrusions is unresolved.Objectives: Using a trauma-film paradigm, we aimed to test physiological reactions to a highly stressful film as an analogue to a traumatic event along the defence cascade model. We also aimed to examine the predictive power of physiological activity for subsequent intrusive symptoms.Method: Forty-seven healthy female participants watched a stressful and a neutral film in randomized order. Heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and body sway were measured. Participants tracked frequency, distress, and quality of subsequent intrusions in a diary for 7 consecutive days.Results: For the stressful film, we observed an initial decrease in HR, followed by an increase, before the HR stabilized at a high level, which was not found during the neutral film. No differences in HRV were observed between the two films. Body sway and trembling frequency were heightened during the stressful film. Neither HR nor HRV predicted subsequent intrusions, whereas perceived distress during the stressful film did.Conclusions: Our results suggest that the physiological trauma-analogue response is characterized by an orientation response and subsequent hyperarousal, reaching a high physiological plateau. In contrast to the assumptions of the defence cascade model, the hyperarousal was not followed by downregulation. Potential explanations are discussed. For trauma-associated intrusions in the subsequent week, psychological distress during the film seems to be more important than physiological distress. Understanding the interaction between physiological and psychological responses during threat informs the study of ANS imbalances in mental disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dataset Information

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

Publications

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

Similar Datasets

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