Why Does Bad News Promote Altruism?
Although seemingly positive, this finding is not so simple
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5 min readJust now
The outcome of the previous scientific breakdown revealing the tremendous harm imposed on our minds by negative news consumption may stir up another question:
Can consuming news have any positive outcome?
It must be noticed that any research of this kind is based on , which implies that our media exposure has a direct impact on our attitudes and the way we perceive the world. However, the most apparent trend in this process is the perception of the real world as more dangerous and negative than it actually is (why — it will be shown below).But what positive outcome may come out of such an abundantly negative aura?Surprisingly, I came across one scholar’s arguing that disaster news can make us more altruistic. Can we straightforwardly say that news has any purely positive impact on us? The short answer is rather yes, and yet it would be too simple-minded to stop at this. Let us examine this more closely.
