(Cartoon Credit: Liza Donnelly; http://lizadonnelly.com; blog: http://open.salon.com/blog/liza)
----------------------
**First, a disclosure. Occasionally, I get overwhelmed by a completely irrational bout of optimism. I believe for just a moment that everyone will do the right thing, that everything will fall into place, and that good will overcome evil. It is during one of these bits of craziness that I am writing this post. You have been warned.**
I was reading an article this morning about how the government is trying to 'halt the cycle of fear' and it struck a cord with me. Clearly, we are stuck in a downward spiral right now. It's trickle-down economics gone bad. Everybody is hiding their heads in the sand and waiting - afraid to buy or do anything right now for fear of what is still yet to come. Now, of course, there are broad macro-economic reasons for all of this that can be debated 100 different ways (and I still won't really understand what's going on).
But there is one thing I do know - negative outlooks and feelings are contagious. And, let's face it, there is no shortage of negative news out there. You can't turn on a tv or open a newspaper or browse a blog without hearing about how bad things are and how bad they are going to be. Other countries are even tapping into this and adding to the depressing headlines ("Russian Analyst: US Will Collapse Next Year").
Now, this is nothing new. It's always been true that negative headlines sell better than positive ones. Sure, there are positive feel-good stories every now and then, but mostly the news has been about what is going wrong - who's killing whom, who's stealing what, who's corrupt, who's a cheat, etc...
Chip Heath (half of the Heath brothers team who wrote the best-selling "Made To Stick") actually published an academic paper in 1996 in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes that studied whether people prefered to pass along good news or bad news ("Download Good news, bad news-OBHDP "). The interesting conclusion was that it completely had to do with the perceived negativeness or postiveness of the topic. Through a series of social experiments, Heath surmised that people were more likely to "pass along exaggeratedly bad news when the topic is emotionally negative, but to pass along exaggeratedly good news when the topic is emotionally positive." So, if the topic was wait times at the health center, rated as an emotionally negative topic, people were more likely to pass along negative news (even if they were expecting the news to be positive...).
Clearly, the economy is a negative topic right now. As such, people (and, more importantly, news outlets) are far more likely to share exaggeratedly bad news than good news. This bad news then leads people to make fearful decisions, leading to more...bad news.
This is where Twitter and other social media can save the world. The news outlets are not going to buck the natural trends as they need to do what is going to give them readership and keep them in business. However, David Meerman Scott is right in that we are all journalists and publishers in this day and age. How about we use this power for good instead of evil?
What would happen if everyone in the twittersphere and blogosphere committed to spreading nothing but good news for the next day or week or month? What if we only talked about positive experiences instead of negative? What if we talked about success stories instead of making fun of failures? What if we talked about bargains instead of rip offs.
What if, in essence, we were actually positive and hopeful and optimistic and altruistic? Is it possible that it might rub off? Based on Heath's research, it would appear that we would first need to switch the emotional perception of the topic of the economy to one that is positive vs. negative. Obviously, this would be a huge undertaking. But with millions of self-made journalists and publishers out there fighting the good fight, is it impossible????
Ok, as I float back down from the clouds into the real world, this is seeming less and less likely. But, on a personal level, I'm going to at least try. I'm going to share positive stories - both in person and in my social media outlets, and do my best to create some positive feelings in my own little sphere.
What do you think? Willing to give it a try?
Comments