When Was the Last Time You Took a Deep Breath?
With a never-ending news cycle filled with one global crisis after another, our bodies are affected by what we read more than you may think
Bad news seems to follow us daily. And it’s likely you’re seeing or reading about it right from the moment you wake up, as 80% of Americans say they check their phones within 10 minutes of waking up. This continual absorption of the latest headlines probably continues throughout your day since most Americans also check their phone once every 5.5 minutes. It’s no wonder that negativity can seem ubiquitous.
While it’s good to stay informed, unfortunately the ratio of news you’re digesting skews heavily towards the negative. Part of this stems from a human negativity bias — or the tendency for people to pay more attention to negative information than positive information. This is a sometimes unfortunate byproduct of an evolutionarily adaptive tendency to be extra-sensitive to danger. In modern times, it causes our attention to be more strongly piqued by stories that leave us with negative emotional responses, like stress, tension, worry, fear, or anxiety. Media companies are well aware of this, with their careful tracking of ratings, hits, and engagement. Our own negative attention bias may in turn encourage the…
