Bad news becomes hysteria in crowds, new research shows
June 7, 2018, University of Warwick
News stories about terrorism, disease outbreaks, natural disasters, and other potential threats become increasingly negative, inaccurate and hysterical when passed from person to person, according to new research by the University of Warwick.
Led by Professor Thomas Hills in Warwick's Department of Psychology, the study finds that even drawing the public's attention to unbiased, neutral facts does not mitigate this contagion of panic.
This is the first research ever to investigate the impact of dread on the social amplification of threat, and to examine the re-exposure of balanced information on the social diffusion of messages.
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2018-06-bad-news-hysteria-crowds.html#jCp
