What is a negativity bias? When we watch the news in the media, we like to feel that it’s mostly just bad news and terrible news. Whether it’s news like a cat that can’t get off a tree, the divorce of 1001 current artists, or the steadily falling price of meatballs caused by the corruption of a state official until a meteor prophecy falls that destroys all living things including you who read this article. So, the truth is, why is the press coverage mostly bad? What’s causing it?
Many of us often say that we prefer the good news, rather than the bad news. But the researchers found that we tend to pay more attention to the bad than the good. This is referred to as “Negativity Bias”.
What are the researchers say?
So, the researchers say, that it comes, from our ancestors’ earliest days. Where the bad and dangerous things are more quickly responded to by our brains because they threaten our safety.
According to research, the part of our brain that responds to negative things reacts more sensitively than the part of our brain that responds to positive things. That’s what makes our brains, until now, instinctively, more interested in news and bad news, because our brains are more sensitive to things that can potentially harm us.
On the other hand, poor reporting is also largely due to conflicts of interest. As we know, the news we consume every day is the result of the hard work of journalists. These journalists often experience conflicts of interest, where they are forced to obey their superiors’ orders to write negative news about an event. As a result, journalists were forced to write such news for fear of losing their jobs.
What can We do?
However, negative reporting itself is not always in quotation marks, negative. The news can open up our awareness of issues that we didn’t previously know were out there. But we also need to hone our analytical skills on everything that’s shown in the media, referred to as media literacy.
We can do media literacy in our daily lives. Like when we read the papers, watch television, or listen to the radio. Then, we compare one news broadcast by some of these media, then analyze the difference. After that, we recreate the news according to our understanding, and we have become more critical of the media.
So, after reading this article, hopefully, we will no longer just use the newspaper as our snack wrap. But, also began to be critical and concerned about what is a negativity bias. And also realizes that there are still a lot of good things going on out there.
