ABSTRACT

A critical human need is attending to the information in one’s environment. Recent studies, however, suggest news consumption is decreasing. Many report they intentionally avoid news because of its distressing nature. This study applies an evolutionary psychology approach to explore when people follow fear-inducing news topics and avoid them. A U.S. National survey tests hypotheses on the impact of fear induced by media messages and describes how evolutionary functionality operates to produce responses of following and/or avoiding the topics. Results show fear is important, but so is the perceived significance of the threat, perceived personal efficacy to cope with the threat, perceived news overload, and news consumption habits. Following news is mainly a function of high news use habits and the perceived importance of topics. Finally, following and avoiding news are not on a single dimension, as the two behaviors are most often uncorrelated.

摘要

人类的关键需求是关注一个人的环境中的信息。但是，最近的研究表明新闻消费正在减少。许多人报告说，由于其令人沮丧的性质，他们有意避免使用新闻。这项研究采用进化心理学方法来探索人们何时遵循引起恐惧的新闻主题并避免它们。美国国家调查调查了关于媒体消息引起的恐惧影响的假设，并描述了进化功能如何运作以产生关注和/或避免话题的反应。结果表明，恐惧是重要的，但感知到的威胁重要性，感知到的应对威胁的个人效能，感知的新闻超载和新闻消费习惯也是如此。跟随新闻主要是新闻使用习惯和话题重要性的函数。最后，