How Bad Financial News Is Affecting Your Brain (and the Economy)

Our brains are particularly hard wired to focus on more dramatic, bombastic sources of information. “It’s about survival. It’s more important for our survival to avoid the bad than seek the good,” says Kuhnen. This instinctual reaction may have been helpful when avoiding a predator but in a time when information comes to us from sources motivated by a need for attention and profit, these emotional triggers can lead us in the wrong direction.