The previous chapter demonstrated a negativity bias in media content. It also argued that the negativity bias is a product of our tendency to be more attracted to negative news – or, put more forcefully, it is a product of humans being hardwired to react more to negative than to positive information. This chapter explores this possibility further through two tests of our reactions to news content.

The tests take two (quite different) forms. First, I analyze data on newsstand magazine sales, weekly, over the past two decades, using sales data made available by Maclean's magazine in Canada. These data are matched to human-coded covers for every issue. Controlling for seasonal variation in magazine sales, as well as the subject matter of cover stories, the tone of cover stories/pictures appears to matter to newsstand sales: predictably, negative covers sell more than positive ones. This is taken as a first, aggregate-level indication that humans (or at least the media-consuming public) are indeed more interested in negative news content than in positive one.