Spring 2015 4181299

Is there really so much trouble in the world?

Marie Sophia Nitzgen

Student ID: 4181299

Spring 2015

Patterns of Action Dissertation (C83PAD)

Word Count: 3897

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Introduction

Popular opinion is that the news has never been as predominantly negative as today, and that most people would prefer more positivity in the media (West, 2001). However, when considering the statistics of news preferences over the past decades, it becomes clear that people’s main interests have remained stable- but stably negative. War and terrorism have proven the most popular, then bad weather, man-made and natural disasters, followed by crime and social violence (Robinson, 2007). This finding is supported by studies reaching back as far as 1940, showing that negative news sells better than positive news (Allport & Milton, 1943). Although surveys show that media consumers wish there were fewer negative stories (Lichter & Noyes 1995), it seems that humans have a subconscious attraction to negative information (Uscinksi, 2014). This phenomenon has been coined the negativity bias (Shoemaker, 1996). By attending to, and recalling, more negative information (Kensinger & Schachter, 2006), it is possible that this evolutionary mechanism makes it appear as though the world is much worse than it really is. The negativity bias, in combination with the change in media accessibility (Hilbert & Lopez, 2011) and the change in news format, illustrates that negative news about our world has never been more ubiquitous. Through considering the negativity bias, its applicability in everyday life and reasons for its preservation, as well as the impact of multimedia news, this paper aims to explore how a cognitive bias and increased press accessibility affect our of trouble in our world.

Do people really prefer cheerful news?

As mentioned above, the popular opinion that more positive news would be well received is not supported by empirical evidence investigating underlying news preferences. Rather than using surveys to examine attitudes, which tend to show that people want to see less negative news (West, 2001), examining people’s underlying reactions and selection of news stories paints a different picture. Firstly, when watching negative news, viewer’s heart rate and skin conductivity increase compared to other types of news, which indicates higher attentiveness (Soroka & McAdams, 2012). Therefore, while viewers may say they prefer positive news, their subconscious bias of attentiveness towards negativity can be seen through their

2 Spring 2015 4181299 physiological reactions. This study was ecologically valid, as it used actual news broadcasts, and did not inform the participants of the aim of the study. However, the physiological reactions measured do not indicate participants’ preferences. In this line of thought, Trussler and Soroka (2013) examined participants’ news selection preferences. The volunteers were under the impression they were taking part in an eye-tracking study, and told to select news stories to review before the experiment commenced. All news stories were presented on a prepared website, which was controlled for equal amounts of positive and negative political news. As expected, the study revealed a significant preference for selecting and reading negative stories.

Nevertheless, when answering questionnaires on the kind of news they would like to read, participants paradoxically stated they preferred positive news (Trussler & Soroka, 2013). Compared to previous studies (e.g. West, 2001) that used surveys to study news preferences, this study provides realistic evidence for a negativity bias in the news. The setting allowed for participants’ true preferences to be examined, as they were naïve to the goal of the study. Supporting this, Haskins’ (1981) reviewed comments about news reports in America. His analysis showed that while people complained about too many negative news stories, at the time of the study only one third of all news in America was classified by the researcher as negative news. Haskins concluded that people overestimate how much bad news there is, while at the same time evidencing a much higher interest for negative news (one third higher), than for all other news combined. To conclude, while people say they prefer positive news, when allowed to choose, negative news is favoured.

The Negativity Bias

Studies by Soroka and colleagues (Soroka & McAdams, 2012; Trussler & Soroka, 2013) evidence people’s subconscious preferences for hearing about negative news: an effect that can be explained by the negativity bias. This bias, evident in studies of (Loftus & Burns, 1982), and (Kensinger & Schachter, 2006), is a pervasive and potent phenomenon, evolved help humans rapidly react to threats (Shoemaker, 1996).

The phenomenon of focusing attention on the potent negative and threatening features of an image, such as a snake in a photo of a forest, has been documented in many

3 Spring 2015 4181299 studies (Kensinger, 2009). In forensic , the term “weapon focus” has been mentioned as a factor influencing (Kramer, Buckhout & Eugenio, 1990). Loftus (1979) studied this effect by showing participants photos of a concealed or openly displayed gun while tracking their eye-movements. She found that when the gun was visible, participants spent considerably longer looking at it than anywhere else in the image. While this study only used static images, which are not representative of real life, it does show that attention is narrowed to a salient negative item within a scene. Later research by Loftus and Burns (1982) expanded on, and supported, this finding using dynamic stimuli. The weapon focus effect emerged using either stimulus, showing that participants consistently paid more attention to threatening features of a scene.

Much psychological literature has confirmed that our memory for shocking news is highly detailed, with factors such as public importance and amount of rehearsal, both internal (thinking) and external (talking), affecting memory longevity (Winograd & Neisser, 1992). Peeters (1971) posited that both public and autobiographical negative events are described elaborately and with a richer vocabulary, compared to positive events. This was empirically supported by findings from Kensinger & Schachter’s (2006) study on recollections of a soccer game: participants who judged the outcome of a soccer game as negative recollected the event with more detail, while participants with positive recollections only described the gist.

Furthermore, Brown and Kulik (1977) asked participants under which conditions they had first heard of dramatic public events (e.g. assassinations of celebrities). When personal relevance and shock were high, people’s recollections of their circumstances were found to be vivid, for example black participants recalled their circumstances at the time of Martin Luther King’s assassination with more detail than white participants. This study needs to be interpreted carefully though, since the use of questionnaires without controls did not allow for verification of the accuracy of the memory. However, Brown and Kulik’s (1977) study evidenced that internal and external rehearsal of shocking events is likely to lead to durable and vivid of negative events, whether these occurred within the personal or the public domain. Overall, it is clear that the negativity bias affects both attention and memory for events that are potentially harmful. However, this effect holds for photos and videos,

4 Spring 2015 4181299 which makes it questionable as to whether this bias is still adaptive in relation to news and media.

Why is the negativity bias preserved?

Seeing as the negativity bias is an evolutionary mechanism, originally assumed to have evolved to allow for quick responses to threats (Shoemaker, 1996), it is questionable whether this bias is beneficial in modern society. In Goldstein’s (1998) book “Why we watch”, the author presents evidence that while the emotional centres of the brain (limbic structures) have not changed over the past fifty thousand years (Zillmann & Zillmann, 1996), human’s ability to escape threatening situations has. It is impossible to fight or run away from shocking news such as global warming or terrorism (Zillmann, 1979). However, humans’ monitoring of threatening events persists; it is adaptive in terms of being aware of weapons in the vicinity, but in terms of learning about violence on the news, it perpetuates a skewed and troublesome image of the world. For example, Gibson and Zillmann (1994) found that shocking reports about car jacking led to people vastly over-estimating the danger posed by this crime, even though most instances of the event occurred without physical violence. However, the over-representation of extremism in the media, coupled with the negativity bias, led to an exaggerated paranoia about the event occurring and a distorted image of the frequency of brutality.

Beyond knowing about danger in the community for adaptive reasons, humans also have a morbid curiosity for knowing about violent events. Goldstein (1998) pointed out that while it may be valuable to know how a murder stalks his victims for personal safety, people are fascinated by gruesome details, for example learning about the murderers’ inclinations with the victims. While this does not improve the distress experienced by the negative event (Denny, 1991), this interest may stem from an underlying need to be informed about shocking events, even when the information learned does not improve security. This desire for information may stem from wanting to maintain an illusion of control; people tend to overestimate the amount of control they have over events, and when a loss of real control occurs, a common coping mechanism is to attribute oneself control over the situation (Fenton-O’Creevy, Nicholson, Soane, & Willman, 2003). Therefore, while there is no adaptive advantage to being aware of the negative events around the world, knowing and talking about

5 Spring 2015 4181299 them may increase perceived control.

Various studies have supported the adaptive value of maintaining an illusion of control, pointing out that depressed individuals often have an overly realistic view of the world (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Furthermore, the desire to share distressing information about our environment with others (Zech & Rimé, 2005) is evidence of an out-dated adaptive mechanism- within a community it may be helpful to alert others to immediate dangers, however talking about trouble reported in media does not provide an adaptive advantage to the community (Goldstein, 1998). Still, high valence news consistently spreads faster online than unemotional news, showing an inclination to inform others about shocking events, even when these do not present a direct threat (Berger & Milkman, 2012). From the above evidence, it is clear that while the negativity bias is adaptive within a small community, attending to national or even global news over-represents trouble occurring in the world, and leads to an exaggerated view of negative events. Based on the adaptive nature of the negativity bias, and human’s innate desire for control, this bias may be retained in modern times and in relation to global news, even though it is not adaptively advantageous to pay attention to negative events around the world.

While this does provide an explanation for why there appears to be so much trouble in the world, it does not explain why 71% of people in a large survey study conducted in Great Britain feel the world is getting worse (Etchells, 2015). This feeling of increasing problems could be explained partially by the methods of the media, which has become more accessible, omnipresent and attention grabbing over the past few decades.

How the news perpetuates a sense of trouble in the world

The growth of the Internet has completely reshaped how much news humans are exposed to, and the amount of information received every day has more than quadrupled since 1986 (Hilbert & López, 2011). In this “information age”, vast amounts of news and ideas are received and sent out daily, more than three times as much as there was twenty years ago (Hilbert & López, 2011). Not only does this heightened exposure to news increase awareness of events in the world- since 1990, the percentage of Americans who follow the news closely has risen from 23% to 30%

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(Robinson, 2007) - but the changing format of the news itself perpetuates a sense of an increasingly troubled world.

In order to examine how the changing news format and content has affected the perception of trouble in the world, it is important to consider not only the increase in news circulation, but also the change in media presentation. While the news used to be delivered mainly in text format, now it is accessible in video format as well, which leads to stronger and faster affective responses to the content (Dillard & Meijinders, 2002). As Paivio (1986) pointed out, images have a more direct impact on emotional reactions than words do. Furthermore, information in video format is recalled with higher accuracy than text (Bol et al., 2013). This finding holds for both younger and older users of Internet websites, meaning that even with populations that go online less than average (Charness & Boot, 2009), video news still has a lasting impact. This phenomenon has been identified as the picture superiority effect. Beyond the improved of photos compared to text, this effect also impacts the availability heuristic for recalling negative news. Seeing as imagery improves memory drastically compared to text information (Levi & Lentz, 1982), the bottom-up processing of emotionally salient photos and videos facilitates the ability to recall negative imagery. This increased availability to recall the emotionally salient images can lead to an overestimation of how much shocking news was actually encountered. Overall, the heightened presence of news in various media formats can have a notable effect on people’s perception of trouble in the world.

Secondly, the form in which news is presented, as well as effects used to gain attention, has also changed. While media exposure has increased (Alleyne, 2011), the media itself has also adapted to become more noticeable and memorable. This difference is visible in Figure 1 below, comparing current news imagery to news channels in 1970.

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Figure 1: Comparison of the BBC news channel from 1970 (left) to 2015 (right), the most viewed news channel in the United Kingdom (BARB viewing figures, 2015). Left image retrieved from Rogers (2013), right image retrieved from BBC Word News (2015).

In Figure 1, the use of red has markedly increased- the colour that catches attention best out of the colour spectrum, and is also the most salient (Gelasca, Tomasic & Ebrahimi, 2005). While only BBC news screenshots are shown, many other news channels use red colouring as well, such as FOX news in the United States of America. Based on the evidence presented, comparing the left image, with a grey background, without high colour contrast or imagery support, to the image on the right with attention-grabbing colours, imagery and textual support, it is clear that attention to the news would have increased with the changes that occurred in their presentation.

Additionally, newspaper front pages have also increased the use of attention-grabbing devices, similar to news channels. As shown in Figure 2 below, comparing the most circulated newspaper in the United Kingdom, The Sun, from 1970 to 2015, the front pages have visibly changed.

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Figure 2: The Sun newspaper, 1970 versus 2015 (the most circulated newspaper in the United Kingdom (Turvill, 2015)). Left image retrieved from “Retro Baltimore” (2014), right image retrieved from “World reacts to Charlie Hebdo” (2015).

While these images of newspapers constitute but one example, they evidence a pervasive and international trend in the arms-race for attention. As mentioned in reference to News channels, increased colour contrast and use of red on the newspaper front-page, using large images, is an effective attention-attraction mechanism (Gelasca et al., 2005). Furthermore, the increased use of UGC (User Generated Content), referring to images supplied by amateurs, filmed at the scene of the event, also perpetuates the extreme, and often ‘live’, imagery used by the media (Feinstein, Audet, & Waknine, 2014). Due to the heightened immediacy experienced by seeing an image of the event, photos are seared into memory more than text would be (Levi & Lentz, 1982). Also, images can be attended to without using any cognitive resources or attention control (Staats & Lohr, 1979), meaning that people may even passively pay attention to news imagery. For example, the right image in Figure 2, used recently by a newspaper, shows a policeman being shot by gunmen in Paris while visibly raising his hands in appeal for mercy. This image is haunting, even without the superimposed dramatic text.

Furthermore, David (1998) empirically examined the effect images have on news memorability. The researcher conducted three experiments using different stimuli,

9 Spring 2015 4181299 and consistently found that news presented with a semantically relevant picture was more memorable. Furthermore, his study pointed out that event-based news was rated as more interesting than issue-driven news. The former usually has more visual support, which further drives the gap in interest between the two (David, 1998). The change in how visual information is presented, and how we are exposed to news outlets on a daily basis, undoubtedly affects our memory of, and attention to, event- driven news in the media.

Why the news perpetuates the negativity bias

Given that news broadcasts and publications are able to attract attention, why do these continue to report predominantly negative stories? Remote exposure to issues in the world has been found to significantly impact both children and adult’s psychopathology (Fremont, Pataki & Beresin, 2005), but does it affect journalists in a different manner? For example, physicians have been found to engage in emotional regulation early on in their career, meaning that their empathetic response to seeing others in pain dampens (Decety ,Yang & Cheng, 2010). Perhaps journalists engage in a similar reduction of emotion to shocking news content over time. However, Feinstein et al (2014) conducted a study on the effect of UGC on the clinical health of journalists, and found that frequent exposure to this content had affected reporters’ psychological health. Frequent exposure to this graphic and uncensored material predicted anxiety, depression, and alcohol consumption. This study did not find any emotional regulation effects, and explained the negative effect on people’s health being due to stressful news triggering the limbic system, which releases cortisol, leading to chronic stress over time (Smith, Gropper & Groff, 2009). Seeing as humans have an innate tendency to pay attention to negative news, as discussed above, it appears that the news is negatively affecting readers’ and reporters’ mental health, and simultaneously affecting our perception of trouble in the world.

In order to understand why reporters continue to feed the negative news cycle, examining how this type of news circulates is informative. For example, Harper’s Weekly newspaper sales spiked in the 1859 issue, in which a murder story was reported, including images of the people involved (Goldstein, 1998). Illustrations gain

10 Spring 2015 4181299 far more attention than just a written story, and other newspapers since then have reported similar surges in circulation after reporting details of shocking stories (Goldstein, 1998). While these are only statistics, studies of news circulation have also consistently found that negative headlines sell better than positive ones, especially with visual support (Allport & Milton, 1943; Meffert, Chung, Joiner, Waks, & Garst, 2006). This explains why violence in today’s media is highly visual, producing a more visceral response than printed stories, and therefore greater sales. Increased immediacy heightens the feeling of an imminent problem, and creates competition between different newspapers for the most shocking and attention- catching report.

Apart from a bias to negative information, humans also have a desire to confront what society conceals, namely the marginalization of death, which in modern society has gone so far as to nearly denying its existence (Dumont and Foss, 1972). This focus on youth and health (Lee, 2004), has led to a contradictory fascination with death, expressed not only through our attention to negative news, but also the emergence of dark tourism, horror movies and violent video games, to name a few. A common news mantra is “if it bleeds, it leads”, exemplifying that journalists know that shocking stories sell (Serani, 2011). In a Times daily Mirror poll (“TV Violence: More Objectionable In Entertainment Than in Newscasts”, 1993), over half the correspondents stated they did not just want to read about violent events, but actually see images of murder and war, and also did not feel the amount of violence in the news was exaggerated. Human’s natural disposition to attend to shocking and negative images and events has led to a negative news cycle, perpetuating an image of trouble in the world, while maintaining wide news circulation.

It is important to point out other possibilities for the perception of an increasingly troubled world. Firstly, Soroka, Nir & Fourier (2013) posited that cultural variability may also play a role, and compared reactions to negative news in Canadian and Israeli participants. However, their data showed that participants reacted to news in the same way, although culture, media presence and military threat in the two countries are significantly different. Both groups reacted much stronger to negative news, regardless of institutional variability. However, this study only looked at variations in heart rate, which may not be enough to generalize from. Furthermore, only activation,

11 Spring 2015 4181299 but not attractiveness of the story, was measured, which could have shown another difference in reactions. Nonetheless, based on studies showing infants’ negativity bias (Vaish, Grossman & Woodward, 2008) and cross-cultural homogeneity in this bias, it appears to be an innate mechanism that controls our attention to the news regardless of culture (Soroka et al, 2013).

Finally, the negativity bias is not the only cognitive error that could affect the feeling that the world is filled with predominantly negative news; confirmation bias may also play a role. This bias refers to people interpreting new information so that their prior conclusions remain faultless (Nickerson, 1998), which could lead to people discrediting information that points to the world not being as troubled as they perceive. Instead, through continuing to attend to negative news, they would confirm their hypothesis. This illustrates that the negativity bias is not the only factor coming into play when considering why people perceive the world as worsening, but it does show a large part of the picture.

Conclusion

On one hand, the perception of increased trouble in the world is perpetuated by our negativity bias, which increases the likelihood of remembering and attending to negative or shocking information. This used to be evolutionarily advantageous, but in modern times, it is not necessary to be informed about crimes and disasters occurring far away, and actually perpetuates worries about safety (Fremont et al., 2005). And yet, attending to negative news and gaining information about them, even when they are occurring beyond the community, is important to most. But on the other hand, the news report mainly pessimistic stories (Stafford, 2014), which feed into the negativity bias, and increase the cycle of perception of trouble in the world.

Finally, the above reasoning leads to an issue- if humans desire negative news, shocking imagery and detailed reports of disasters and crime, why would the news media not report these types of stories? Even though it has been shown to affect the mental health of viewers and journalists, the news will continue producing stories that result in the widest circulation of their paper. So, while one of the main complaints about the news is its consistent negativity (Haskins, 1981), humans are innately more attracted to negative headlines, making negative news sell more than positive news. It

12 Spring 2015 4181299 is unforeseeable that human attraction to negativity or the news’ attraction to wide circulation will change within the near future. However, a brighter conclusion of this paper is that despite the news reporting negative stories, most of these do not directly affect our everyday life (Haskins, 1981). Secondly, it appears that the world is not as troublesome as the news portray it to be. Therefore, it is important to be aware of the negativity bias, the distorting effect it can have on our perception of the trouble in the world, and take information gained from the news with a pinch of salt.

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