Bad News Makes You Unhappy At Work, Study
If you leave for work with a baggage of negative news, then you remain unhappy throughout the day, according to Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan of the Institute for Applied Positive Research along with Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post.
The research has aimed to find out how bad news can affect the employees' workdays.
To take their survey, the researchers tested 110 participants in two teams. The first group watched some bad news in the morning before 10 a.m. The second group, on the other hand, was exposed to exactly 3 minutes of happy and positive stories.
Six hours later, the two teams entered a survey that guaged their stress and mood.
The group that had watched bad news was 27 percent more likely to become unhappy compared to the other group that watched the success stories.
"We believe that negative news influences how we approach our work and the challenges we encounter at the office because it shows us a picture of life in which our behavior does not matter. The majority of news stories showcase problems in our world that we can do little or nothing about," the authors wrote to Harvard Business Review,
To take the study to the next level, the researchers wanted to take it to "gym goers and sales and customer service at call centers", to find out whether negative news affects their performance or not.
Bad news is unavoidable and tends to dominate the headlines.
Why then, do we tend to read them more? According to an earlier study it has been found that most people are attracted towards depressing stories and react fast to negative words, which indicates why most news is all about "terrible, depressing events".
How then can you switch off the negative emotions with bad news could bring?
In three ways, according to the scientists: "turn off the news alerts, turn off the radio and start the day with success stories".
"It's possible to stay informed about the news and remain positive and focused on your own work, but only if you control your news consumption instead of letting it control you," the authors added, according to hngn.
