News, Politics, and Negativity

Abstract

Work in political communication has discussed the ongoing predominance of negativenews, but has offered few convincing accounts for this focus. A growing body of literatureshows that humans regularly pay more attention to negative information thanto positive information, however. This article argues that we should view the natureof news content in part as a consequence of this asymmetry bias observed in humanbehavior. A psychophysiological experiment capturing viewers’ reactions to actual newscontent shows that negative news elicits stronger and more sustained reactions thandoes positive news. Results are discussed as they pertain to political behavior andcommunication, and to politics and political institutions more generally.