Have you ever wondered what effect the “bad news” on psychological well -being can have?
We live in a period in which it imperate the threat of a pandemic now known by the name of Coronavirus. But also in which we confront the danger of involvement in wars from world resonance, conflicts and political crises, terrorist threats, natural catastrophes, murders and accidents of greater or lesser severity.
Well, in all this we rarely stop to reflect on what the effect is that such media bombardment It can have on mental states.
Some may feel crushed by the weight of the negativity of such news and feed anxieties and insecurities, impotence and depressive aspects. Others can react with detachment and poor emotional involvement almost to defend themselves from too painful and distressing feelings.
Every day each of us face events in everyday life that can have a significant impact on mood. Consequently on the mental health. In addition to respecting the right to information, television programs should promote “positive hedonic experiences”, aimed at encouraging positive affections and minimizing negative moods, thus evoking pleasure and favoring mental well -being (Deci & Ryan, 2008).
Studies on the relationship between media news and mental health
Some scholars have investigated the possibility that the negative emotional content broadcast by the television programs cause marked changes to the mental states and different activation levels based on the characteristics of the person. Finally, the urged emotions may vary according to the dominant themes presented by the mass media.
Many television newslets focus more on the relevance of negative news rather than on positive news. The risk is to “be overwhelmed in a spiral of negativity and curiosity” (Lewis, 1994).
A motivation to emphasize the negative value of the news is found in the need to compete to grab a greater number of listening, focusing on the transmission of emotionally relevant material.
However, the presence of “bad news“Inside the news is one of the reasons that can determine the loss of interest and the drop in concentration in spectators to avoid confronting too much negativity (Klein, 2016).
News news, anxiety and depression
The results of some studies suggest that watching news programs with a predominantly negative value increases the scores in self-administered evaluation tools that detect Depressive or anxious mental states and subsequently they would lead to encourage the catastrophisation of personal concerns.
Anxious and depressive soul states They would tend to generate errors in the processing of information, favoring focus on dangers or negative material.
The role of the brood
For example, the mental states for example predispose to deal with threatening content (Wells, 1994), often relating to topics in accordance with the current issues covered by the media, which can prepare for mobble.
In addition, negative mental states (especially depressive) facilitate access to congruent memories (negative or threatening memories) with these moods and affect the mood (Mathews & Macleod, 1994).
These distortions in the processing of congruent information with mood represent causal factors in mobble Chronic and pathological (Wells, 1994).
In particular, the attentive bias of focus on the threatening contents induced by an anxious mental state would lead to processing and retaining with greater relevance “bad news” by increasing the possibility of triggering the process of mobble.
This could increase typical phenomena of the processes of chronic concern Like the excess of negative cognitions and the tendency to catastrophise potential threats.
Finally, the increase in negative mental states as a consequence of the vision of news with negative value would be associated with the increase in the catastrophisation of personal concerns rather than associated with the contents of the news themselves.
This is consistent with the theory for which negative moods represent a causal factor in facilitating the mobble or the tendency to worry (Wells, 1994). Some studies also show how by inducing a negative mood, this can have a causal influence on mobble regardless of measures of anxiety And depression.
Difference between brooders and not
Some authors have suggested that the difference between brooders and non -mulletors can be traced in the fact that the former access more easily to memory containing catastrophic answers to catastrophic questions like “and if …?”.
That is, they have a network of associations of expected negative events much wider and richer than the non brooders (Vasey and Borkovec, 1992). Negative moods can be sufficient to recall this material and this could maintain catastrophic sequences.
Finally, programs with news with a negative value not only seem to be negatively impactful on these moods, but probably exacerbate anxieties and worries personal of individuals.
Intuitively, you could expect news of wars, poverty, murders, epidemics etc. they could induce to mull out on these topics. In reality, the effect of such news appears to be extended to a wider range of content not specifically related to the contents of the programs themselves.
Conclusive reflections
In terms of psychological health of the spectators, it would be important that the programming of television schedules considered these effects when preparing and planning the programs containing emotionally negative content.
The massive exposure to news relating to the risk of pandemic and the way in which it is managed by the media, between threats of alarmism, fake news and meticulous updates in real time, therefore involve the transit of people between States of anxiety, fear and helplessness.
However, the type of news can also have different effects on mental health and this regard, McKeon (2020) has observed how news concerning epidemics of transmissible diseases has the power to trigger levels of anxiety and fear “enormously disproportionate” compared to real risk.
Bibliography
- Deci, El, & Ryan, RM (2008). Hedonia, Eudaimonia, And Well-Boing: An Introduction. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9 (1), 1–11. DOI: 10.1007/S10902-006-9018-1
- Klein, P. (2016). Weg Met Het Rotnieuws (Go Away With The Bad News). Retrieved from http://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nederland/column/pieter-klein/weg-met-rotnieuws
- Lewis, M. (1994). Good News, Bad News. The Psychologist, 7, 157-159
- Mathew, A. & Macleod, C. (1994). Cognitive Approaches to Emotional and Emotional Disorders. Annual Review of Psychology, 45, 25-50
- McKeon (2020). Don’t let the Coronavirus changed into an epidemic of fear and panic. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/oplion/article-dont-let-the-coronavirus-mutate-an-epidemic-of-fear-and-panic
- Vasey, M. & Borkovec, TD (1992). In Catastrophizing Assessment of World Thoughts. Cognitive Therapy and Research 16, 505-520
- Wells, A. (1994). Attention and the control of world. In. Gcl Davey & F. Tallis (Edds), World: Perspectives on Theory, Assessment and Treatment. Chihester: Wiley
