The differing responses to online information across the political divide is relatively well known, with numerous studies in recent years highlighting the gap in sharing and even believing of misinformation between conservatives and liberals.

New research from the University of Michigan provides a glimmer of hope in these divided times, and suggests that conservatives and liberals may not be so different after all.  At least, that’s the case when it comes to their reaction to negative versus positive information.

The researchers analyzed the affective, psychophysiological reaction of people to television news content, which basically means they monitored how people sweated as they watched the news.

Prioritizing negative news

The researchers especially focused on our tendency to prioritize negative content, but found that while this is to a large extent true, there were also a sizable minority who appeared more responsive to positive news.

Were there differences along ideological lines, however?  The researchers recruited over 1,100 people from 17 countries across the world to view news stories on the BBC.  Their subconscious reactions were measured using skin conductance, and the stories were a combination of positive and negative ones.

The data showed that there wasn’t really a substantial difference in the reactions of liberals and conservatives, with the researchers saying that instead, there was a consistently variant reaction depending on whether the story was positive or negative.

Given the breadth and depth of the sample used by the researchers, they’re confident that if they weren’t able to find any connection between ideology and negativity bias in any of the countries they used, then it’s probably fair to say that no such relationship exists anywhere in the world.