Negativity Sells Ads

Photo by Roman Kraft / Unsplash

In case you were wondering why the news always seems so negative, this article from Psychology Today, Bad News: Negativity Increases Online News Consumption, provides the answer.  The article covers a new study that found that negative words in headlines made people more likely to click on them and positive words in headlines made people less likely to click on them.

Of course, this study is describing something humans have known for centuries. The concept of, “If it bleeds, it leads” has probably been around longer than the printing press. And I’m not alone in thinking this. On February 6th, over a month before this study was published, Nick Murray published an article, The Relentless Negativity of Financial Journalism, in which he writes:

Most of the economic/financial input most of us get every day comes from mainstream journalism. And the most important thing to bear in mind regarding mainstream financial journalism is that it’s a business. It has no interest in whether or not you become a successful investor. Indeed, since so much of lasting investment success attends upon our ability to tune out the noise and continue to work our plan, it might be said that journalism— the ultimate noisemaker—is downright opposed to your success. 

Mainstream financial journalism is in the business of selling advertising. And clicks are the way it justifies its advertising rates. The more clicks, the more it can charge. So if pessimism/ negativity/alarmism generates the most clicks, you know what you’re going to get. 

When you read a depressing headline, take it with a grain of salt.  The world rarely ends, and the bad news is never the whole story. In fact, I’d argue there are so many amazing things happening in the world right now, it is hard not to be optimistic about the future.

• AI Develops Cancer Treatment in 30 days

• Scientists treated heart attacks in mice – before they happened

• India Sets New Wheat Production Record

• Pest Resistant Tomatoes Finally Available After 30-Year Wait

You get the idea. I can’t remember the last time I went a day without reading something that opined on unanswerable questions like, Will there be a recession? How high will interest rates go? How much will earnings decline this year? Will the government shut down? But in the long run, these questions don’t matter.  What matters is that technology will continue to advance, billions of people around the world will move up into the middle class, and in two decades time, things that seem impossible will be as commonplace as ordering an Uber ride is today.