Watching or listening to negative information in the morning, even for a few minutes, would have an immediate effect on stress levels and cause mood swings throughout the day. This is because a push on your phone, a radio ad, or pictures of bad news can affect your emotions and make you more depressed throughout the day and less efficient.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania (USA) wanted to understand the impact of bad news broadcast on television and radio on the mood and mental health of individuals.
To carry out their study, they placed 110 participants in two different situations. The first group observed three minutes of negative reporting before 10 a.m. The second group watched three minutes of positive reporting without going into ecstasies over videos of puppies, cats and squirrels water skiing. Six hours later, the participants had to answer a questionnaire to assess their stress level and their emotions.
The study’s findings found that people who watched only three minutes of negative news in the morning were 27% more likely to be unhappy during the day than others.
The next step in this study will be to analyze the negative effects of this type of information on productivity and performance. Because, in a previous study in the 1980s, Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania followed insurance salespeople and found that optimistic salespeople made 37% more sales than their pessimistic counterparts and concluded that the good humor made it more productive.
Since the majority of news is negative, try turning off the television and radio in the morning and turn off push notifications on your phone or email. These alerts draw your attention away from the present moment, toward negative emotions, and can lead to sadness and poor performance.
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