The news industry has famously operated via the ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ maxim for a long time, with the underlying truism that bad news is what gets readers and viewers interested.  It’s an orthodoxy that may require some adjustment, with a new study from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor revealing that this lust for negativity is certainly not shared across the market, with many much preferring to read about good news.

The study involved over 1,000 people from 17 countries from around the world, and whilst it found that people do indeed seem to pay more attention to negative news than positive news, this is not something that covers the entire market, with a sizable minority preferring to consume positive stories.

“In a period during which news around the world is especially wrought with negativity, this subject is of obvious significance,” the researchers say.

Good news

The researchers set to explore the psychology of our apparent bias towards negative news.  For instance, they highlight some of the evolutionary advantages of our predisposition towards negative information, as it can be much riskier to ignore negative information than positive information, therefore paying attention to bad news has proven an effective survival strategy over the years.

As well as exploring some of the origins of our negativity bias, they also wanted to explore whether it was consistent across the world, and managed to recruit an incredibly broad cross-section of ages, genders and races from every continent on earth.

Each volunteer was shown several random stories from the BBC World News, with the broadcasts covering a combination of positive and negative stories.  As they watched the broadcast, their heart rate and skin conductance levels were monitored.

It emerged that a slight majority of volunteers showed a bias towards the negative news stories, with this finding consistent across countries and cultures.  When explored on an individual level however, considerable variability was observed, with around 2 out of 5 volunteers showing a bias towards positive news.

“One of the things that the study is flagging is that there’s a great deal of variability within people,” the researchers say. “This is true across all cultures.”

With many broadcast media now attempting to personalize the content they provide to users, perhaps it is overdue for more traditional news media to start doing the same so that individuals are served with the kind of content they prefer.