This post contains descriptions of violence in the news.
Have you ever been saddened or dismayed by a news about a terrible event, such as a natural disaster, mass shooting, or a crime? You're not alone; such stories can make us emotional. One psychology researcher, Kathryn Buchanan, was inspired to study people's reactions to news events by her own experience. She was listening to news about the mass shooting at the Ariana Grande concert in 2017. She felt upset at the news, but she also felt some relief, when she later encountered news about examples of people's kindness in the shooting's aftermath.
This journalist's account in the Washington Post describes how Dr. Buchanan turned her experience into a research idea:
She began to contemplate whether being exposed to heartwarming content could counteract the known negative impacts of consuming harrowing news stories. Common symptoms include heightened stress, hopelessness, anger, anxiety and depression.
So she started a years-long study in 2017,[…]. [The research team] split 1,800 participants into several groups — each of which were shown news clips or articles about a recent U.K.-based terrorist attack or a similar catastrophic event. Some of the groups were solely exposed to upsetting news, while others were subsequently shown a story about [either] a heroic act or a more lighthearted subject.
Here is a description of some of the results:
The group that was strictly shown unsettling news reported increases in negative emotions and decreases in positive feelings. That group also indicated feeling more pessimism about humanity and society. Meanwhile, participants who were also shown stories of kindness reported feeling less negative emotions, coupled with increases of positive emotion. That group reported a more optimistic view of the world.
Participants used two scales from 1 (meaning very slightly or not at all) to 5 (meaning extremely) to assess the level of negativity and positivity they felt before being exposed to the content, as well as after.
Repeatedly throughout their research, Buchanan and Sandstrom saw that uplifting news can provide an emotional buffer against distressing news. They also found that “there’s something special about kindness in particular,” Buchanan said, noting that while amusing stories (such as swearing parrots or classic jokes) diminished the effects of upsetting news, stories about acts of kindness were even more powerful.
a). See if you can classify the variables in the study. Here's a hint: There were four dependent variables and one independent variable.
| Variable name | What are the variable's possible levels? | Is this manipulated or measured? | Is this an IV or a DV? | For IVs: is it within groups or independent groups? |
b) Which kind of experiment is Study 1: Posttest only? Pretest/posttest? Concurrent measures? Repeated measures? How do you know?
c) Look at the description of the results, above, for level of positivity only. Sketch a graph of the results they described. Here's a hint: it's important to find a way to include the pretest and posttest scores on positivity.
d) Think about the four big validities and apply them to this study. Specifically, ask one question to help you interrogate external, internal, construct, and statistical validity.
I appreciated that, in the news story, the journalist mentioned other studies that also measured people's reactions to negative news in the media. Journalists do not often talk about recent studies in the context of an entire literature, but this one did! You can read examples of conceptual replications of this study in the journalist's story (scroll toward the end).
The empirical study can be read for free here at PLOS One.