A couple of days ago, I wrote about how we’ve got it good, citing data that shows our health and wealth have increased significantly over the past 200 years.
Soon after publishing the post, I received a comment on the post and a text message from a family member. Both expressed that they disagreed with the point I was making.
First, let me say that I genuinely appreciated both the comment and the message. One of my favorite things about writing is that it catalyzes conversations that tend to be deeper and more thoughtful than everyday small talk. So, if either of you are reading this, thank you, and I hope that we can continue our dialogue.
That being said, receiving the comment and the message confirmed this general feeling I’ve been having that there’s a lot of pessimism floating around.
As I started to do more research (a.k.a., Googling), it wasn’t hard to find multiple polls and surveys with results showing that a large percentage of people hold pessimistic views of our current situation and the future.
For example, a new 2023 survey conducted by Pew Research Center found that “63% of Americans are pessimistic about the country’s moral and ethical standards, and 59% are pessimistic about its education system.”
From a global perspective, another survey asked people from 17 different countries, “All things considered, do you think the world is getting better or worse, or neither getting better nor worse?” 58% of respondents thought that the world is getting worse.
Why are we so pessimistic?
That is the question I aim to answer by exploring the causes of pessimism, from the cognitive biases that shape our thinking to the media outlets that perpetuate negativity.
1. Blame the brain
One of the reasons why we tend to be pessimistic is due to the way our brains are wired.
Our brains have an inherent bias towards negativity, which is an evolutionary adaptation that helped our ancestors to identify potential dangers in their environment.
“Negativity bias” was identified by psychologists Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman in a paper published in 2001.
Another psychological phenomenon that makes us more pessimistic is called the “availability bias,” which causes us to give more weight to negative events that are easier to recall, leading us to overestimate the likelihood of negative outcomes.
More recently, scientists have discovered a region in the brain called the caudate nucleus, which is responsible for pessimistic thinking. This suggests that our tendency towards pessimism has a neurological basis.
2. News media outlets focus on the negative
You might know the saying, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
News and media outlets tend to focus on negative stories.
A study published in 2022 analyzed 23 million headlines from 47 news media outlets popular in the U.S. and found that:
There has been “an increase of sentiment negativity in headlines across written news media since the year 2000.”
“Headlines from right-leaning news media have been, on average, consistently more negative than headlines from left-leaning outlets over the entire studied time period.”
There has been “a growing proportion of headlines denoting anger, fear, disgust, and sadness and a decrease in the prevalence of emotionally neutral headlines across the studied outlets over the 2000-2019 interval.
Why are news headlines increasingly negative?
In one word: money.
Most news media outlets are for-profit businesses.
Fox News is owned by Fox Corporation, which is “controlled by the Murdoch family via a family trust with 39.6% ownership share, and by Rupert Murdoch himself to the effect of almost 40%.”
CNN is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
News media outlets that operate under a commercial model rely on revenue from advertising, subscriptions, and sponsorships to sustain their operations.
This means that their primary goal is to attract as many viewers and readers as possible, in order to increase their revenue and profitability.
As profit-driven companies, news media organizations have a financial incentive to emphasize negative stories, as they attract more attention and, subsequently, more revenue.
David Brooks summarizes the point well in an Atlantic article:
“Negativity is by now so deeply ingrained in American media culture that it’s become the default frame imposed on reality. In large part, this is because since the dawn of the internet age, the surest way to build an audience is to write stories that make people terrified or furious. This is not rocket science: Evolution designed humans to pay special attention to threats.”
For people who rely on news media as their primary source of information, this can lead to a skewed perception of reality, where negative events appear to be more prevalent than they actually are.
Ultimately, this can result in people becoming overly pessimistic, as they are constantly exposed to stories of conflict, violence, and despair, which may not be representative of the broader reality.
3. News travels faster and wider in the age of internet and social media
In the past, people relied on word of mouth and local newspapers to stay informed about current events.
As technology advanced, news dissemination became faster and more widespread with the advent of radio, television, and the internet.
With each new medium, news became more accessible and instantaneous, allowing people to stay up-to-date on events around the globe in real time.
Now, with the rise of the internet and social media, the speed at which information travels has accelerated even further, leading to a 24-hour news cycle and constant exposure to information.
People are inundated with a constant stream of negative news stories and social media content promoted by algorithms that prioritize sensational and controversial content.
Positive or nuanced stories are often underreported, overlooked, or just simply scrolled past.
If the problem of news media outlets fixating on negative headlines is a small fire, then the accelerating effect of the internet on information velocity is fuel on that fire.
4. People are ignorant of the facts
Another key reason why people may be pessimistic about certain issues is a lack of awareness of the facts and data.
When people rely on news media as their primary source of information, they may be exposed to sensationalized or incomplete information that does not accurately reflect the full scope of the issue.
For example, a survey of 26,489 people across 28 countries asked, “In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has decreased, increased, or remained the same?”
52% of people answered that the share of people in extreme poverty is rising.
However, data shows that the opposite is true.
The percentage of the global population living in extreme poverty has been steadily declining for two centuries.
5. Another cognitive bias
Above, we already mentioned two other biases: negativity bias and availability bias.
There’s another bias called “confirmation bias.”
Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to seek out and interpret information in a way that confirms their preexisting beliefs while ignoring or rejecting contradictory evidence.
For example, if someone believes that climate change is not a real threat, they may be more likely to seek out and believe news stories that downplay the scientific evidence for climate change, while dismissing or ignoring evidence that supports the scientific consensus on the issue.
Confirmation bias can entrench pessimism by causing people to ignore or dismiss facts and data that suggest a more optimistic outlook.
This is especially common when people hold strong beliefs that are rooted in their political, religious, or moral ideologies, and are resistant to new information that challenges those beliefs.
An understanding of confirmation bias gives us a more layered, nuanced appreciation of cases where people seem to be “ignorant” of the facts. It may not be that they are ignorant per se, but rather that they are suffering from the human tendency to seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs.
Even when presented with evidence that contradicts our beliefs, we may engage in mental gymnastics to maintain our worldview, such as cherry-picking facts or interpreting data in a way that supports our pre-existing beliefs.
In some cases, people may be aware of the facts but feel threatened by them, as they challenge deeply held beliefs or values. This can lead to a sense of cognitive dissonance, where people feel uncomfortable holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously, and may resort to ignoring or rejecting the new information as a way of coping with this discomfort.
Conclusion
A certain amount of pessimism is healthy when balanced with optimism.
Too much pessimism makes life depressing.
On the other hand, excessive optimism can cause you to overlook dangers and risks that deserve your attention.
And there are some issues that we absolutely should be pessimistic about because the data shows that we are headed in the wrong direction.
Expressing a negative view does not make you a pessimist. If the reality is indeed negative, then you are just accurately describing reality.
However, if the reality is positive and you persist in thinking of it and referring to it as negative, that type of pessimism is depression-inducing without the upside of risk avoidance.