title: The psychological impact of negative TV news bulletins: the catastrophizing of personal worries.
abstract: This study investigated the effect of the emotional content of television news programmes on mood state and the catastrophizing of personal worries. Three groups were shown 14-min TV news bulletins that were edited to display either positive-, neutral- or negative-valenced material. Participants who watched the negatively valenced bulletin showed increases in both anxious and sad mood, and also showed a significant increase in the tendency to catastrophize a personal worry. The results are consistent with those theories of worry that implicate negative mood as a causal factor in facilitating worrisome thought. They also suggest that negatively valenced TV news programmes can exacerbate a range of personal concerns that are not specifically relevant to the content of the programme.
authors.affiliation: School of Cognitive & Computing Science, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, UK.
authors.forename: W M
authors.initials: WM
authors.lastname: Johnston
authors.forename: G C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Davey
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001007:Anxiety; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D011897:Random Allocation; D013690:Television