Watch: Professor of Psychology calls for more constructive journalism 

Professor of Psychology at Aarhus University Henrik Høgh-Olesen guested the Constructive Institute lounge earlier this week for at talk on negative news and it’s psychological impact. According to him, news media have a job to do in countering our natural instict of being drawn to negative news:

“I think that people in many ways have heard enough about negative news, and I think that some part of the brain is overloaded, so I think many stories could be angled from different points of view. You could also look at the same story from a constructive point of view,” he says.

A result of the massive amount of negative news is, he points out, that news consumers – especially young people – increasingly avoid the news:

“If you’re going to feed me with all this negativity there comes a need in me to also hear other things. So when young people avoid the news it’s almost because they avoid being told that there’s nothing they can do in this country or in this life”.

Therefore, Høgh-Olesens advice to the media industry is to work towards a more constructive coverage:

“Try to balance the message and try to have a constructive part of the story that focuses on what to do with the things that are scary in one way or the other”.

“Yes, most definetely. Of course we have to know about all the catastrophes in the world, but we don’t only have to know about catastrophes, we also have to know about possibilities, opportunities and ordinary things you know that make sense in an ordinary human life”.