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Shawn AchorMichelle Gielan
September 14, 2015
We ve known for some time now that hearing negative news broadcasts can have an
immediate effect on your stress level, but new research we just conducted in
partnership with Arianna Huffington shows how significant these negative
effects can be on our workdays. Just a few minutes spent consuming negative
news in the morning can affect the entire emotional trajectory of your day.
In 2012, we conducted a yet-to-be-published preliminary study with Martin
Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania where we found that just a few
minutes of negative news has a significant effect on mood. This year, we
partnered with Arianna Huffington to examine the longer term impact of news on
well-being and performance. In this study, 110 participants were blindly placed
into one of two conditions: one group watched three minutes of negative news
stories before 10 a.m.; the second group watched three minutes of
solutions-focused news. This is important: the second group did not watch
saccharine stories about cute puppies, rainbows, and waterskiing squirrels
(although we love that viral video). The solution-focused news group watched
stories of resilience to build the belief that our behavior matters. Two of the
videos included inner city kids working hard to be successful in a school
competition, and a 70-year-old man who got his GED after failing the test
dozens of times. Then, the participants were emailed six hours later and asked
to fill out a survey within two hours. This survey contained a battery of
positive psychology metrics to gauge things like stress and mood. We were
stunned by the results (we even reran the analyses to double-check it) because
the effects were much more significant and dramatic than we expected.
Individuals who watched just three minutes of negative news in the morning had
a whopping 27% greater likelihood of reporting their day as unhappy six to
eight hours later compared to the positive condition.
In the next phase of our research we will investigate the impact of negative
news not just on individuals mood but on their performance. We ll look at the
effect of watching negative news on TV while at the gym, as well as the effect
of negative news stories on sales and customer service at call centers in the
Midwest. Our hypothesis, given substantial evidence that negative moods affect
workplace performance, is that it will have a negative impact on performance
levels in both cases.
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. We see the market
dropping 500 points or ISIS poised to attack, and we feel powerless to change
those outcomes. In psychology, believing our behavior is irrelevant in the face
of challenges is called learned helplessness, which has been connected with
low performance and higher likelihood of depression.
There is an equally compelling body of research that links optimism to higher
performance. In a classic study in the 1980s, for example, Seligman followed
insurance salespeople at Metropolitan Life and found that optimistic
salespeople outsold their pessimistic counterparts by 37%. Our own research has
shown how quickly positive cues can affect our behavior. In our previous HBR
article, Positive Intelligence, we described how a group of hospitals in
Louisiana trained 11,000 doctors, nurses and staff to make eye contact and
smile at people who walk down the hospital hallways within 10 feet of them.
Just six months later, they observed a significant increase in the number of
patients visiting the hospital, an increased likelihood of referring that
hospital based on the quality of care received, and elevated engagement levels
for the employees. A one-second free behavioral change taught people a
different social script: we are connected and your positive behavior can have a
real impact on others.
We ve also seen this at play out at our client companies, with the most
compelling example coming from Nationwide Insurance. The president of
Nationwide Brokerage Solutions, Gary Baker, decided to apply positive
psychology research to the company s workday. In particular, employees begin
their days with a huddle, where they meet to share good news and rally around
colleagues who might need some extra support that day. Those positive starts to
the day, among other changes instituted based on positive psychology training
at Nationwide, have led to an increase in gross revenues from $600 to $900
million and an application rate 237% higher in just one year. (Some might argue
that this is correlation rather than causation. However, J.J. Bowman, business
development leader at Nationwide, said during an interview that the organic
positive changes and optimism felt on the team did drive revenue, as opposed to
the other way around.)
So how can you prime yourself for higher levels of performance and feel better
during the day without sticking your head in the sand and tuning out the news
altogether? Try these three simple, research-supported strategies:
Turn off news alerts: Since the majority of new alerts are by default negative,
try turning them off for one week. Shut off push notifications to your phone or
email. These alerts pull our attention away from the present moment and can
lead to decreased performance, as we are distracted from our work. If there s
anything really important happening, you ll hear about it soon enough.
Cancel the noise: In Before Happiness, we suggest that in the same way you
might cancel the noise on a plane using headphones, you can turn your brain
into a noise-canceling machine by practicing meditation. Or, try turning off
the radio for the first five minutes of your commute. When you do turn the
radio back on, don t listen to angry talk radio, and mute at least one set of
commercials per show. It s hard to tune into the signal of our own lives when
we re bombarded by the noise that surrounds us.
Change the Ratio: Start your day with empowering, solutions-focused news. Seek
out stories on your favorite news site that are transformative, which means
that they empower people with actions steps and potential solutions instead of
just focusing on the problems. Occasionally, skip clicking on stories that are
hypothetical or about tragic one-time situations that you can do nothing about.
Find solution-focused news like Huffington Post s new What s Working series or
CNN s new impact series. If you don t like that there s so much negative news,
don t forget: you vote with your fingers. Every time you click on a story, you
re telling the media you want to be consuming this.
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.
Shawn Achor is New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and
Before Happiness. His TED talk is one of the most popular, with over 11 million
views. He has lectured or researched at over a third of the Fortune 100 and in
50 countries, as well as for the NFL, Pentagon and White House. Shawn is
leading a series of courses on 21 Days To Inspire Positive Change with the
Oprah Winfrey Network.
Michelle Gielan, a national CBS News anchor turned UPenn positive psychology
researcher, is now the bestselling author of Broadcasting Happiness. She is
partnered with Arianna Huffington to research how transformative stories fuel
success.