Why Do We Like Negative News?

In the press, the number of negative news is much higher than the positive ones, and the explanations for this are much more complex than one might think at first glance. A study done in Canada shows that it is not only the cynicism of journalists or the public's attraction to the sensational that are the factors that influence this structure of news, writes BBC.

Unjustly forced children to experience incurable diseases, accidents, and their orphans, marriages that split after years together, and quarrels that have the power to tarnish memories. We see them and they tell us in all their grotesque at a coffee and a cigarette, in the summer on the balcony or at a program of maximum audience from a weekend evening.

Is he the man of nature, the easy prey of envy and the suite of all negative thoughts? Is it just an undeclared and unconscious morbid pleasure that is born in each or one last proof of despair with which we look among those around us, mirrors of our dramas? Man, the social being is ultimately a slave to belonging, dependent on external confirmations.

Confirmation in the arms of others

Turning to external unhappiness does not necessarily come from the pleasure of bombarding us with such data. It is part of human nature and such an interest for this softer part but beyond all that, the pleasure for unhappy stories is nothing but interest and motivation to be able to know, and at the same time to calm down, that not we will be or we will not be the only ones who have gone through such experiences.

It's like a support point being created. The unhappy part we carry with us manages to relax and be shared unconsciously or more or less consciously the moment we hear or see what is happening to others. We cannot say that we like unhappy stories, but only that when we hear them from others, we use the experience contained in them to strengthen ourselves in the event of going through our own experiences of this kind.

It is an interest, and attention that awakens in us and that can trigger this pleasure effect by the way we are present there to learn less consciously, from the experience of the one who went through such an event, such a story.

People between people, the need for belonging

What creates the pleasure of hearing, of seeing the unhappy experiences of others, is the need to know, to understand, and to reassure ourselves that we are not alone, we are not alone in our pain, in our unhappiness. It is a confirmation that these events are part of the world, they are part of life and it does not only happen to me.

There are moments of relaxation, moments in which we manage to free ourselves mentally from this burden that we carry with us. For this, we need to confirm ourselves outside in these stories of others.

From art to gossip, different shapes, same background

The predisposition for sad stories does not necessarily depend on the degree of culture. The cultural level intervenes in changing the form of manifestation. A man with a higher degree of culture can find such consolation and reflection in other ways whether we are talking about books, creation, screenplays, movies, theater, or opera.

The need to share, to relax is the same. The form of manifestation differs from person to person and from one cultural model to another. The difference between these human tendencies is to share unpleasant experiences to be able to compare and to eliminate the feeling of bitterness, loneliness, roping that comes from the form.

Whether we go to the theater, listen to a concert or take refuge in art, or sit on the bench, eat seeds and listen to the latest gossip of the village, the same human breathes through every pore of our body.