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Like rubbernecking at a grisly highway accident , people find it hard to resist read horrifying news show tale . medium coverage of murder , child abuse , natural tragedy , and the similar surrounds us on a day-to-day base . We lament that there is no good news in the world , but the real truth is that there is , yet nobody wants to read it .
You ’ve likely learn that regretful news show sell , or the journalism adage , “ if it bleeds , it lead . ” Yet the mainstream media is not entirely to charge for make this negative atmosphere — we are . Like it or not , the more flagitious the crime , more commove the accusation , or more painful the imagery , we crave it , we get across it , and we share it .
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We might think we ’re sick of discover about the dire state of the domain , but we ’re the ones feed the machine . Here are six reasons we select horrifying news stories – even if we recollect we do n’t desire to .
It’s evolutionarily necessary
Our brains are hardwired to identify threats . electronegative newspaper headline trigger alarm bells in our amygdaloid nucleus , the learning ability ’s monition organization , and our survival instinct kicks in . For case , we feel as if we need to know the gory detail of a slaying in an exploit to forbid it from happening to us or our families . We need to know if we involve to change something in our life to help prevent lurking , at hand danger .
Whether the threat is real and actually happening to you or hypothetical and just something you ’re read online does n’t matter much ; your brain ’s tripwire has already sparked your interest .
Evolutionarily speaking , we have more to lose from pretermit menace than we have to reach from enjoy in good . That ’s why theresearch saysthat the public actually demands bad news .
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