From Washington State University
Buyer’s remorse — model shows people demand all that bad news
PULLMAN, Wash. – Bad news in the media got you down? News consumers have only themselves to blame, says new research showing that it’s actually buying habits that drive negative press.
The research looks at the negative news phenomenon through the prism of economic science. And while previous studies have focused on the supply side by examining media output, the current analysis is among the first to investigate a negative news bias from the consumer or demand side.
Washington State University Professor Jill McCluskey and her colleagues at the University of Leuven in Belgium created a theoretical model that illustrates how consumers get more value from negative news than positive news.
Focusing on newspapers, the researchers looked at the way people use information from news articles to enhance their well-being and avoid losses. Their model analyzed how much happiness consumers derived from choosing either bad or good news. The results showed greater individual benefit from reading the bad news.
Collectively, this tendency creates a societal preference for negative news stories said McCluskey.
“Newspapers act on this demand by reporting more bad news to attract readers and sell more papers,” she said.
The study was published in the journal Information Economics and Policy and funded by Research Foundation – Flanders and the KU Leuven Research Fund.
Avoid risk and make wise choices
The researchers built their model on an economic theory asserting that as an individual’s income increases, the impact of each additional dollar diminishes.
“When you are very poor and hungry, for example, each dollar is worth a lot as it helps you buy enough food to eat,” McCluskey said. “But once you have more money and can count on regular meals, it’s the losses that will affect you more. In terms of happiness and well-being, a $1,000 loss will affect you more than a $1,000 windfall.”
The same idea applies to information offered in newspapers, the Internet, TV or radio. In their model, the researchers used a measurement called utility to assess the benefits or drawbacks people get from consuming a good or service – in this case, positive and negative news stories.
Their findings highlight a strong human tendency to avoid risk.
McCluskey said consumers read good news to glean information about benefits from a positive event, which might improve their own income or welfare. Reading about the success of a Fortune 500 company, for example, might help one decide to invest in their stock.
Bad news, on the other hand, provides information on how to avoid a negative event or loss to one’s well-being. Reading bad news helps consumers avoid making bad choices.
“Food scares are a good illustration as they are widely covered by the media,” McCluskey said. To protect their health, “people choose to avoid the suspected food – such as beef during the Mad Cow scare, or spinach with the E.coli outbreaks.”
Over time, McCluskey said the model clearly showed individuals gain a greater advantage from reading bad news than good news. These consumers, either consciously or subconsciously, then continue to choose newspapers with more negative reporting. In response, news outlets take advantage of that risk aversion to maximize their profits.
Downside to bad news
Despite its benefits to readers, bad news generates negative consequences of its own, the researchers found. For instance, too much bad news can be depressing to some people.
Skewing media toward bad news can also cause heightened fear of risk that differs from the scientific consensus, like concerns about genetic engineering, said McCluskey.
A recent study by the Pew Research Center in cooperation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science showed that 88 percent of scientists believe genetically modified foods are safe, while only 37 percent of the public agrees. 87 percent of the scientists also said humans are the primary cause of climate change, in contrast to 50 percent of the public.
And bad news can lead to extended or exaggerated responses to a negative event. “Even after the E. coli scare was over, people still wouldn’t buy spinach. There can be a lot of impact on growers and wasted food with these scares,” she said.
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“When you are very poor and hungry, for example, each dollar is worth a lot as it helps you buy enough food to eat,” McCluskey said. “But once you have more money and can count on regular meals, it’s the losses that will affect you more. In terms of happiness and well-being, a $1,000 loss will affect you more than a $1,000 windfall.”
This is completely contrary to reality, and many marketing people know this as they give away silly gifts to entice people to spend lavishly.
The typical experience of business owners with dollars spent, lost or squandered is a resigned “Oh well, you’ve gotta spend money to make money”, but every dollar in brings a satisfaction beyond its nominal value; it represents success and that is not to be plotted in linear fashion.
Nothing is more injurious to our rights and freedoms than the propensity of news organizations to relentlessly vomit bogus bad news stories all over our faces.
“Party like it’s 19-99.”
Spend, spend, indulge.
The credit card bill won’t matter,
because we’re all going to ________________________ .
A. Glow with fallout (1962)
B. freeze (by 1980)
C. starve (Y2K)
D. fry (IPCC)
implication, spend now… A let socialism take care of you “if” you’re wrong.
If ‘they want only bad news’ why did the New York Times use the word ‘blizzard’ this last blizzardy winter only six times?
Twice for HAWAII!
When it was so cold in New York that 100 year records were shattered over and over again, the NYT didn’t have hardly a headline about any of this.
This is hardly new. Way back in the Vietnam/Kent State/MLK/Watts Riot/Bobby Kennedy days of the late 60’s there was a Big Deal made for a while in the media about changing focus to good news and reporting more of “What’s Right About America and The World…” I remember Cronkite and Huntley & Brinkley (the CBS and NBC anchors at the time) doing on-air op-eds about it. How more good news would be better for America. It hardly lasted a year, if that. Ratings killed it and the explosion of cable a few years later nailed down the lid. I also recall a few op-eds at the time grumping about how awful we all were for not reading/watching the good news.
“If it bleeds, it leads” was coined recently, but the concept goes back to the 19th century if not before. At least they are not blaming it on CO2 (yet…)
People use the same strategy when voting. Everyone knows that when a politician says he is going to do something good he knows he is lying, or is unaware that he won’t be able to accomplish it. On the other hand people know that politicians are quite likely to do something harmful. Therefore negative advertising works because it helps people figure who might be the lesser of the evils.
It’s much more complicated than good or bad news. Any good news can be spun as bad in several ways (“No one killed in wars today” -UN can be converted to “Even though no one killed in wars today, 2 million refugees live in temporary camps…”). Most new stories leave out essential information, especially the good news type of information so overall things look worse than they are.
I stopped reading after “The researchers built their model on an economic theory…”
Yikes.
(snark)
People have this dangerous perception that news is informative first. It’s a stereotype likely built by a combination of ignorance and the classic Hollywood reporter who exposes corruption all altruistically. In the real world they live and die by ratings and reporters careers are made and destroyed based on finding the next big scoop. Given the amount of effort that goes into finding said scoop and the relative rareness of true scoops the next obvious solution is to just make things up.
It’s not even good enough to just watch/read multiple sources. That might work okay for political bias, assuming you’re the kind of person who can manage to actually read conflicting view points, something most people have a great deal of trouble with, but for sensationalism it doesn’t work at all since they all have to get in on a given topic to maintain those ratings.
Now if only the environmental bad news would be from the headline that Al Gore is lying about it and stealing your money because of it, that would be bad news I could trust!
To further depress the population, prime-time television takes the ugliest from the news media to dramatize and dwell upon. The ratings soar.
Then they take the most base and ugly situation and make reality shows and docu-dramas to ingrain that thinking.
87% of scientists believe that humans are the primary cause of climate change? Really?
I know, right? Those 13% must not be on the Gravy Train. They can do better!
87%?
Makes a change from 97%.
Unless it is a typo, of course ….. .
“A recent study by the Pew Research Center in cooperation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science showed that 88 percent of scientists believe genetically modified foods are safe, while only 37 percent of the public agrees. 87 percent of the scientists also said humans are the primary cause of climate change, in contrast to 50 percent of the public.”
Is this a case of a foolish consistency, rather an “incosistency”? If climate alarmism is the negative story people want, wouldn’t we expect more of the public than scientists to attribute dangerous warming to humans? And where does the 87 percent of scientists come from, and scientists of what?
Well, that’s journalism in a nutshell.
“If climate alarmism is the negative story people want, wouldn’t we expect more of the public than scientists to attribute dangerous warming to humans? ”
It’s basically the classic “boy cries wolf” situation. In 1989 senior environmental official Noel Brown, at the United Nations said “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.” That kind of hype needs to be backed up by reality. Thirty years later, nothing bad has happened. There is no wolf.
After 30 years of having NOT watched the “evening news”, in 2013 when my Mother was at my house (I live in a northern tier state, and my Mother, up to here CHF, lived in AZ) for the last 10 months of life, with congestive heart failure…I humored her for a while (about a month)…and watched the evening news. Without being aggressive, or confrontational, I began to “disect” the news in terms of what the “message in the media” really was. Eventually, my Mother (mentally sharp to the very end) AGREED with me. We had a competing “America’s Funniest Home Videos” on another cable channel, and that became the standard fare when I came home from work. I regret NOT ONE MOMENT of that, and can safely say I am currently totally absent of the LOCAL TV NEWS and the Network’s EVENING NEWS. My life is better for it. I recommend it to all.
“Collectively, this tendency creates a societal preference for negative news stories said McCluskey.”
“Society” is a construct. A concept. Society doesn’t have an address. Therefore “societal preferences” are illusionary ideals because a “society” is not a real, physical thing.
It’s nice that they have come up with these theoretical models of how humans think and determine “value”, but real human individuals don’t actually work like that and so these models are particularly useless.
Is it just me, or does it seem that have we learned everything there is to know and now we re-examine, use synonyms to describe, and call it innovation?
This is just another ‘Capt. Obvious” jumping onto the train and claiming to be the conductor. Similar to Al Gore inventing the internet. The real learning is going on elsewhere, underfunded I’m sure.
The whole of AGW is a fear narrative, that is scary stories to titillate the masses along the lines of WMD’s and zombies.
Another bit of research without a well thought out plan.
Gosh! Circulation dropped when we only printed bad news…
It couldn’t have been because people didn’t like their news filtered or censored?
It couldn’t be because the ads were not useful?
It couldn’t be because of a normal seasonal circulation fluctuation?
It couldn’t be because the quality of happy happy writing was dismal?
A complete lack of controls listing all variables.
Incomplete situation analysis.
A result that strongly resembles the “It must be CO2!” types of analysis.
So let’s keep adjustIng our communications strategy to feed this hungry monster. We’ve got a mountain of bad news stories that are backed by highly credible evidence. For example, people in the US don;t realize that carbon tax schemes are probably going to double or triple their gasoline and home heating bills.
They don’t understand that Obama;s denial of coal fired plants in Africa is a cruel insane policy that is tantamount to deliberate genocide. Did we learn nothing from Gore’s “Ethanol from Corn” debacle?
People don’t understand what is store for their own children if we don’t kill the CAGW movement. it is being aggressively promoted by the White House propaganda machine.
People don’t understand that the integrity of science is at stake.
There’s another angle to this that I feel is very important.
We often feel superior when we hear bad news. I’ll explain:
Family of 4 killed in car crash, driver was drinking. I’m morally superior because I don’t drink.
Woman walks into fountain while texting. I’m smarter, & can do two things at once.
Ship hijacked in Somalia. That’s would never happen in the USA! We’re superior.
Stupid criminal leaves license plate attached to bumper that was chained to ATM. Dumb, dumb. I’m smarter and have a good job.
Politician caught cheating on his wife. I love my wife and would never cheat. Morally superior.
Etc…
You can turn almost any bad news into how it would never happen to me because I’m superior in some way!
Good new, on the other hand, can make us examine our weaknesses…
Brain surgeon saves baby. How can I compete with that? I have an IQ of 92.
Janitor wins lottery. Man, am I unlucky. That would never happen to me.
Hero tackles terrorist. I’m a chicken and could never do something that brave.
Bad things happening to doofuses makes us feel better about ourselves!
Boy, I thought I was cynical, but you are far worse. I am sooooo much better than you.
wait a minute….;)
Well played Sir! 😮
Airplane pilots like to find that airplane crashes are caused by pilot error because they tell themselves that they would not make those mistakes. They get quite concerned with mechanical problems that could not be detected by the pilots.
Wow, I used to get a kick out of the Darwin Awards, too.
So, Schadenfreude…
This is a timely topic, especially for voters and denizens of the State of Washington, USA. Currently on the table in the State legislature is a bill to add $0.115 per US gallon to our gasoline/fuels (see: http://washingtonstatewire.com/blog/senate-contemplates-11-5-cent-gas-tax-increase-but-inslee-cap-and-trade-plan-could-mean-trouble/) – this is in addition to the federal tax of $0.184 per gallon (currently in Washington State the total fuel tax is $0.74 per gallon, to jump to $0.86 should this new tax be levied)(see: http://www.gaspricewatch.com/web_gas_taxes.php) . This new tax is earmarked to fund new/improved highway construction to accommodate the burgeoning population especially on the wet (west) side of the Cascade Mountain range. Users of the infrastructure to pay for the upgrades. I dislike additional taxes, but I see the need for the road upgrades daily, this tax appears more palatable personally. I know that to our European counterparts, this additional tax is a pittance. But wait! There’s more! Our eloquent Governor, Mr. Jay Inslee, is pushing a “Carbon” Tax at the same time (see same article at washingtonstatewire) that may be added on top of the $0.115 tax! How grand! And there is no costs estimate that I can find that lets us know how much the “Carbon” tax would extract from our fuel-purchasing hides. And, this “Carbon” tax funding windfall is not to be used to “mitigate” the effects of all of that released “Carbon” within the State – it will fund…smaller class sizes in schools!!! So, if you are against a “Carbon” tax, you are anti-small-classroom-size? Yes, of course! So eventually a tax upon a tax upon a tax – federal + state + “Carbon”. Now, the tie to this thread topic of the Snooze Media (sorry, that’s “News” media, right?). I have posted a few comments over the years, lamenting the biased, unverified, taken-at-face-value, non-thoroughly-investigated, one-sided claptrap that passes as “journalism” in the local daily pulp publication in my neck of the woods, The News Tribune (see: http://www.thenewstribune.com/- to which, yes, I still am a subscriber). This lopsided “journalism” is seen in the cherry-picked reproduction of decidedly climate-alarmist-centric articles especially in the Sunday edition of the paper (examples: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/03/16/3692554/study-suggests-that-key-glacier.html#; and: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/03/16/3691796/a-reagan-approach-to-climate-change.html?sp=/99/447/). As I read the rag daily, I see zero – ZERO – counterpoints to this propaganda of “Carbon”-based, human-activity-damages-the-earth-greater-than plate-tectonics, written garbage. Why? What is the aim of the paper’s message to the (subscriber/voting) masses? Hearts-and-minds…..hear it from “reputable” sources (such as the TNT), find like-thinking souls that have been hoodwinked into believing the “Carbon = Pollution” mantra, accept that a tax on all things “Carbon” is a good thing – and then either stay silent as such taxes are ram-rodded through via Governor edict, or – Deity-of-choice forbid – actually approved via vote. The media in all forms are complicit in this molding of the collective hearts-and-minds of those they reach with their message. Fair? Unbiased? I do not see it. Washingtonians – Do not be hoodwinked. Fuel tax to fix the roads? OK, maybe. “Carbon” tax??? Nyet, no, nein, non, or just flat out no thank you. Rant complete, you may tune to your regularly scheduled WUWT.
Used to work on the dry side at WAZU where we did old fashioned, data based research.
Genuinely sorry for the carbon bs there – we’re getting it in Vermont too, where they still publish my letters reminding people that biochemistry once understood that we are carbon-based life forms??? Now, of course, we are carbon pollution life forms.
I’m getting pretty sick and tired of politicians using the “Pro Liberi” logical fallacy to justify taxes and restrictions.
This strikes me more as an excuse in the form of a study than a study. The described methodology is oversimplified and probably meaningless, especially if the target is newspapers, which have a relatively narrow audience. Generally people want to see their own opinions in print, *and* they acclimate to the opinions of those who seem to flatter them – it’s an acculturation process taken advantage of by PR people posing as reporters.
There are cultural causes deeper than anything else listed there – reporters want to be seen as serious and the community sees “good news” as trivial, reporters want to be seen as independent and “good news” is perceived as a community good (thus the extent to which religious papers focus on it), reporters want to be seen as “solving problems” so they report on problems, and on and on.
Also, on average, we’re talking about b-grade academics from a system that generally denigrates capitalism, of *course* they’re going to blame the markets!
If you look at what happened to Sharyl Attkisson (CBS News), it would become plainly obvious what drives new media outlets: Politics. Negative News is just the weapon of choice to implement this strategy. This is why Ms. Attkisson was able to publish articles critical of Bush during his Presidency, but was forbidden to do the same with Obama.
meanwhile, in the good news dept –
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-johnson/2015/03/16/voxs-ezra-klein-al-gore-should-run-president-combat-existential-threat
I think it would be fabulous to stand him up on the podium – perhaps with Bernie Sanders as running mate – think of the hand waving!
Or is this bleeding and leading?
Maybe it is that we don’t get the news we want but that we get the news we deserve .
That’s entertainment.
A stretch to “believe” any of it as presented by talking heads or copy and paste more unoriginal bunk.
Therefore… “bad news” in this context are… wait a minute. In this particular case either “the public” exhibits less fear than scientists, which means the media failed to supply the required stream of scaremongering, which is an abominable business practice, or it is actually good news, that “humans are the primary cause of climate change”, in which case it is quite understandable, that “the public” rejects it, and keeps looking for “bad news” like natural causes behind weather events. Right?
Uuhm, not.
The bad news is this study does not make sense at all. Therefore we can draw “greater individual benefit” from this fact, which is good news, after all, so we’d better avoid it.
Eh.