By Alissa MacMillan
Q: I seem to be reading only bad news in most of the newspapers and online. Am I just not noticing the good news stories or are they not even being published (or happening!)?
A: When it comes to the climate – and a lot of other things going on in the world – it does indeed seem as if we’re always reading negative news. The positive stories we come upon, like species, lands, or seas being successfully protected, tend to feel surprising and few and far between, and it’s sometimes difficult to know what to believe.
We might very well be overwhelmed by the onslaught, but, according to psychology researcher Afroditi A. Asimakopoulou, it’s actually much more complicated, with several factors at play, including the positive and negative information or misinformation we get in the news, whether we believe it or not, and our own prior emotional state. There are also open questions about just how much the news actually impacts our willingness to act for the good.
Asimakopoulou, who is about to complete her doctorate at the School of Psychology at University College Dublin, knows from her own research that the mood with which we come to the news matters. She studies how emotional factors affect our susceptibility to fake news, testing the theory that people who are in a positive or negative emotional state “tend to believe and remember information that is congruent with their emotional state,” she explains. “That if I am in a positive emotional state, I will pay attention more to the positive news, it will stick to my mind more, versus the negative or neutral.” And, whether the “emotionally-valenced” would be remembered more than the neutral.
NEUTRAL NEWS
She discovered this theory to be true only to a point. From a series of experiments, she found “people tend to believe the negative information, the negative news headline,” perhaps because the negative sticks with us more because of its emotional content, that we are being bombarded with the negative at the moment, or that what’s negative seems the most possible, but these explanations have not yet been shown in experiments.
They also found that people often created “false memories,” or “memories we have about events and information that has never happened before or it has happened a bit differently,” especially for neutral news. In other words, in the face of neutral news, you might not have seen something before but could claim that you have.
Asimakopoulou and her fellow researchers expected false memories to factor in more often for positive or negative news, because of the connection to more emotional content, but “it was more, when the information doesn’t have emotional content, it’s just information on its own, people can say, ‘actually, I have seen that,’ and there is no emotional valence attached.”
Although not statistically significant, the trend seen in their research was that “people who were in the positive emotional state also imported more false memories and beliefs for the fake news.” Because our memory is malleable, she explains, “we try to put together pieces from different parts of the brain, and we remember and forget certain pieces.”
SCEPTICISM CAN BE HELPFUL
And while we might tend to be more believing when our outlooks are more positive, there is some benefit to your bad mood: we are often more sceptical when we come to the news with a negative mindset. We are more critical and better able to question things.
“It has been found before that people in a negative mood tend to remember more and be better at thinking and discriminating between real and fake information.” On the flip side, those in a more positive mood, “are more able to accept things.”
Along with that, one important finding, in agreement with past research, is that, whatever your mood, more analytical, critical thinkers are able to take in the news with more scepticism, and scepticism can be helpful.
“People who had high levels of cognitive ability, the more open-minded, analytical thinkers, were less susceptible to fake news and able to identify which news was fake and which was true.”
What also plays a powerful role, Asimakopoulou explains, are your preexisting beliefs. When it comes to climate change, “I will probably believe the misinformation aligned with my preexisting belief,” which means we have to pay careful attention to what we’re reading and how we’re reading it. “If I am vegan, for example, I will read positive or negative views on veganism in a certain way.”
They also found, in particular with climate change, one-off exposure to fake news does not tend to change behaviours or impact how you read the news otherwise.
CHECK YOUR SOURCES
This might all be well and good, but cultivating a negative mood hardly seems the healthiest way to be a savvier digester of the news. Better, Asimakopoulou suggests, is to get your news from multiple, varied sources, like newspapers, radio, podcasts, and other media, and look into their reliability. In other words: check your sources, even sources you’ve long counted on and trust, as they can change.
And as for your critical thinking, these are skills that can be cultivated: one tip is to always question your preexisting beliefs, or what you might already think you know. These are beliefs which might lead to a bias. And even getting into the habit of checking your sources will make yours a more critical mind.
So, the good news about your bad mood is it might make you a better interpreter of the news. But, no matter how you’re feeling, getting your news from a wider range of outlets, looking to primary sources, and working on your skills at critical thinking will make you the best possible interpreter of all the news you encounter, good and bad.
Direct your eco related queries for Alissa to info@avondhupress.ie (with ‘Alissa’s Eco-advice’ in the subject line)
