Bad news is more likely to attract a casual reader's eye than good news, but that's not news to journalists. In fact, if you want readers it's a good idea even to put a negative slant on good news! People are likely to read a story if the headline implies something bad rather than good.
Many people say that they would prefer good news, but that does not appear to be true. Researchers ran an experiment at McGill University in Canada.
Volunteers were first asked to select stories about politics to read from a news website. Participants often chose negative stories rather than neutral or positive stories. People who were more interested in current affairs and politics were particularly likely to choose the bad news. Yet when asked, these people said they preferred good news and the media was too focused on negative stories.
Psychologists call this negativity bias...a term for our hunger to hear and remember bad news. The reason for this, they say, is because bad news could be a signal that we need to do something to avoid danger.
Evidence suggests that people respond quicker to negative words than good words. In lab experiments when words like cancer, bomb or war are flashed on a screen people hit a button quicker than i when words like baby, smile or fun were flashed.
Another theory is that we pay attention to bad news because we think the world is a nicer place than it really is. This view makes bad news more surprising.
If you feel depressed and angry news headlines last year about the pandemic, wildfires and the Presidential election there are websites that specialize in uplifting news.
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