{"doi":"10.1073/pnas.1908369116","title":"Cross-national evidence of a negativity bias in psychophysiological reactions to news","abstract":"<jats:p>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.”</jats:p>","journal":"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences","year":2019,"id":595068,"datarank":0.9180446128426427,"base_score":6.12029741895095,"endowment":6.12029741895095,"self_citation_contribution":0.9180446128426427,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.9180446128426427,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":454,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":null,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":null,"fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1523612,"name":"Patrick Fournier","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1523613,"name":"Lilach Nir","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1523611,"name":"Stuart Soroka","orcid":"0000-0001-7524-0859","position":0,"is_corresponding":false}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":{"has_enrichment":true,"resolved":true,"title":"Cross-national evidence of a negativity bias in psychophysiological reactions to news","abstract":"<jats:p>What accounts for the prevalence of negative news content? 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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.”</jats:p>","is_dataset_classified":null,"base_score":6.12029741895095,"endowment":6.12029741895095,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"views":0,"has_version_chain":false,"is_dataset":false,"is_oa":false,"pmid":"31481621","pmcid":"PMC6754543","openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/W2971653688","authors":[],"funders":[{"funder_name":"Gouvernement du Canada | Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada","grant_id":"Insight Grants","title":null},{"funder_name":"Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council","grant_id":"unidentified","title":"unidentified"}],"total_grants":2,"fwci":85.4266,"citation_percentile":0.99955125,"influential_citations":0,"citation_trend":[{"year":2018,"count":2},{"year":2019,"count":6},{"year":2020,"count":30},{"year":2021,"count":74},{"year":2022,"count":69},{"year":2023,"count":86},{"year":2024,"count":63},{"year":2025,"count":75},{"year":2026,"count":48}],"oa_status":"bronze","license":"CC BY NC ND","oa_locations":[{"url":"https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/38/18888.full.pdf","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/38/18888.full.pdf","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"http://www.pnas.org/syndication/doi/10.1073/pnas.1908369116","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1908369116","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1908369116","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31481621","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"http://www.pnas.org/content/116/38/18888.full","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/6754543","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC6754543","host_type":"Europe_PMC"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC6754543?pdf=render","host_type":"Europe_PMC"},{"url":"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1908369116","host_type":""},{"url":"https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1908369116","host_type":""}],"fields_of_study":["Social and Intergroup Psychology","Media Influence and Health","Cultural Differences and Values","0508 media and communications","05 social sciences"],"mesh_terms":["Attention","Humans","Mass Media","Negativism","Politics","Psychophysiology","Bias"],"keywords":["Negativity effect","Negativity bias","Psychology","Content (measure theory)","Variation (astronomy)","Politics","Social psychology","Cognition","Cognitive psychology","Confirmation bias","Political science","Neuroscience","Law","News Coverage","Political Communication","Bias","Social Sciences","Humans","Attention","Mass Media","Negativism","Psychophysiology"],"sdg_mappings":[{"sdg_number":14,"sdg_label":"14. 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