News Values - Evolutionary Perspectives

Evolutionary Perspectives

An evolutionary psychology explanation for why negative news have a higher news value than positive news starts with the empirical observation that the human perceptive system and lower level brain functions have difficulty distinguishing between media stimuli and real stimuli. These lower level brain mechanisms which function on a subconscious level make basic evaluations of perceptive stimuli, focus attention on important stimuli, and start basic emotional reactions. Research has also found that the brain differentiates between negative and positive stimuli and reacts quicker and more automatically to negative stimuli which are also better remembered. This likely has evolutionary explanations with it often being important to quickly focus attention on, evaluate, and quickly respond to threats. While the reaction to a strong negative stimulus is to avoid, a moderately negative stimulus instead causes curiosity and further examination. Negative media news is argued to fall into the latter category which explains their popularity. Lifelike audiovisual media are argued to have a particularly strong effects compared to reading.

Women have on average stronger avoidance reactions to moderately negative stimuli. They point to negative news as the main reason for avoiding international news. The stronger avoidance reaction to moderately negative stimuli can be explained evolutionary as it being the role of men to investigate and potentially respond aggressively to the threat while women and children withdraw. Men and women also differ on average on how they enjoy, evaluate, remember, comprehend, and identify with the people in negative news depending on if the news are negatively or positively framed. Women consume less news and as a result are less informed about public affairs than men. One explanation may that the negative news are framed according to male preferences by the often male journalists who cover such news and that a more positive framing may attract a larger female audience.