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Why humans value sensational news

An evolutionary perspective

Hank Davis*

, S. Lyndsay McLeodDepartment of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada N1G 2W1

Received 25 September 2002; received in revised form 7 March 2003

Abstract

Although it draws nearly universal disdain, sensational news continues to attract a wide audience

for reasons that are not fully understood. We examined sensational front-page newspaper stories from

eight countries, published between 1700 and 2001. The 736 stories that we collected were sortedthematically, and 12 categories emerged. An analysis of the frequency of stories within these

categories demonstrates relative stability in their ranking over time and place, suggesting that the

content of sensational news is not socially constructed. The categories that emerged correspond to

major themes in evolutionary psychology (e.g., altruism, cheater detection, reputation, treatment of

offspring). We propose that, like gossip, sensational news stories may trigger an evolved tendency to

attend to categories of information that increased reproductive fitness in the Environment of

Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA). D 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Sensational news; Sensationalism; Gossip; Journalism

1. Introduction

Few newspapers aspire to being labeled sensational. The term is often viewed as a

scathing criticism, implying that the newspaper has abandoned serious news in favor of

cashing in on stories that elicit emotional responses (Nordin, 1979). The fundamental

assumption of this criticism is that serious news is worthy, while sensational news is not.

Another commonly held assumption is that sensational news is a recent development,

reflecting a decline in moral standards and beginning, if not in the twentieth century, then

surely with the emergence of the penny press, in the nineteenth century.

1090-5138/03/$ see front matterD 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/S1090-5138(03)00012-6

* Corresponding author

E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Davis).

Evolution and Human Behavior 24 (2003) 208216


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We question both of these assumptions. First, as we shall argue, sensational news may

serve an adaptive function that will be hard to suppress, regardless of the disdain ofintellectual critics. Second, with regard to recency, sensational news has been traced . . .

into the eighteenth century and below that into the unorganized newsmongering which

preceded the newspapers (Mott, 1962, p. 442).

Almost from the first, sensational news has been viewed with disdain. In 1784, an

editorial observed,

Let a Gazette come out filled with the finest descriptions of prosperity, general health,

growing trade, internal peace and prevailing virtue [and] it will be read almost with

indifference and thrown away . . . In contrast, let a Gazette inform us in detail [of a plague,

civil war, or dreadful famine and] this paper would deeply engage the attention, be read overand over again and pronounced a valuable paper (Independent Ledger, January 26, 1784).

A century later, Guntons Magazine complained: There are more people who will give a cent

for twelve pages of scandal, abuse, caricature and venal representation than will give two

cents for clean, wholesome news . . . (Anonymous, 1898, p. 322). In short, as Mott suggests,

Anything which answers to fundamental and primitive human desires can belong to no

single period (p. 442).

The generality of sensational news extends to place as well as time. Sparks and Tulloch

(2000) argue that media standards are being driven down because of attempts to increase

profit not only in America, but also in European countries such as Britain and Germany, andin Scandinavia. Similarly, Zaller (1999) shows in a variety of tests across TV and print news

outlets in the US that higher levels of news competition are associated with lower levels of

news quality (i.e., more sensationalism).

If, as many of us assume, sensational news is unworthy, why do so many humans

demonstrate its value by spending money on it? The appeal of sensational news has been

explored from a variety of perspectives including sociology (e.g., Bird & Dardenne, 1990)

and journalism (e.g., Clayman & Reisner, 1998). In the present paper, we will address the

topic from an evolutionary point of view. If sensational news provides humans with

information that served some adaptive function in the Environment of EvolutionaryAdaptedness (EEA), then one would expect sensational news stories to focus on a nonrandom

array of topics. A survey of recent textbooks in evolutionary psychology (e.g., Gaulin &

McBurney, 2001; Palmer & Palmer, 2002) identifies food acquisition, parasites, altruism,

predators, reputation, cheater detection, violence, reproductive strategies, and the treatment of

offspring as important determinants of our ancestors ability to pass on their genes. Will an

examination of sensational news reveal that its topics are similar to these issues that

evolutionary psychology identifies as having greatly influenced the success of humans in

the EEA?

Virtually all analysts and critics agree that the emotional impact of a story or its

presentation are what decide whether or not it is afforded valuable space on the front pageof a newspaper (e.g., Danson & Soothill, 1996; Sorenson, Peterson Manz, & Berk, 1998).

The question is, what determines such emotional impact? Arguably, emotional appeal is

uncorrelated with frequency of occurrence. For example, animal attacks (e.g., Crocodiles

H. Davis, S.L. McLeod / Evolution and Human Behavior 24 (2003) 208216 209


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tear apart Thai Suicide Woman) will probably draw attention whether such attacks occur

once a year or once a week. Similarly, stories related to the safety of food supplies (e.g., BigMacs Poisoned Us, Gallacher, 1996) would draw considerable attention regardless of their

frequency. Are concerns such as these socially constructed and peculiar to time and place, or

do they reflect human universals? We believe the latter is the case. In fact, it is the appeal to

our base instincts a term frequently used to criticize sensationalism that suggests that

evolutionary theory may deepen our understanding of sensational news.

In the following study, we begin by asking whether the character of sensational news has

changed over the past 300 years. We examined newspaper stories dealing with people who

were neither famous (e.g., movie stars, royalty) nor public officials or employees acting in the

line of duty (e.g., politicians, police officers). Our guiding question was: What kind of

behavior or circumstances did an average person have to engage in or experience to befeatured on the front page of a newspaper? This definition ensured that it was the behavior or

circumstances of an individual rather than her identity or occupation that was responsible for

her newsworthiness.

We sampled news stories from eight different cultures over the past 300 years. The stories

were examined to determine: (1) what types of behavior or circumstances caused an average

person to appear on the front page of a newspaper, (2) how frequently such behaviors or

circumstances were reported within each time period, and (3) whether certain behaviors or

circumstances were reported more or less frequently than others in different time periods. If

an evolutionary point of view is applicable, we should expect to find relative stability in thethemes of sensational news stories over time and place, as well as in the relative frequency

with which these themes occur over time. Moreover, we would expect these themes to reflect

issues that were of concern to humans in the EEA.

2. Method

2.1. Materials

The materials consisted of a selection of newspapers from Australia, Bangladesh, Canada,

England, France, Germany, Mauritius and the United States ranging in publication date from

1700 to 2001. The specific years and newspapers sampled are shown in Appendix A.

2.2. Procedure

The years between 1700 and 2001 were divided into six periods: 17001750, 17511800,

18011850, 18511900, 19011950, and 19512001. A minimum of three papers was

examined for each period, with no more than two of these papers coming from any single

region (e.g., North America). Times of war and other major events (e.g., elections, stockmarket crashes, etc.) were deliberately avoided when selecting the years to be examined

within each period because such events tend to dominate front pages, truncating the normal

range of news topics.

H. Davis, S.L. McLeod / Evolution and Human Behavior 24 (2003) 208216210


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In order to obtain a balanced sample, we specifically avoided tabloids, whose primary

function is sensational entertainment (Sparks & Tulloch, 2000). An attempt was made to usepapers that occupied the middle ground. Thus, in addition to avoiding tabloid papers

(e.g., the Toronto Sun, the New York Post), we also avoided papers like the contemporary

New York Times, which eschew sensational content as a matter of policy.

A standard protocol was used to avoid any bias in the sampling of stories. We selected

the first 2530 front-page stories that dealt with individuals who were neither famous nor

public officials or service employees. These stories became our data base, regardless of their

content. In certain cases, it was necessary to collect non-front-page news stories simply

because of formatting anomalies (e.g., early papers whose front page consisted solely

of advertisements).

Once the sample of sensational stories was obtained, three raters independently sorted thestories into categories based on their judgement of the storys primary emphasis. The first two

raters independently constructed categories in order to facilitate their own sorting. Twelve of

these categories (the ones presented here) were identical. In some cases, related categories

were deemed too specific to be useful and were collapsed into one of the primary twelve

e.g., kidnapping and child abuse were combined into the broader harm to child

category. A third rater was given a randomly selected sample of approximately 400 stories to

sort into existing categories. Concordance between these judgments and the original ratings

exceeded 90%.

The majority of these categories are self-explanatory; however, it is necessary to clarifyseveral of them. The robbery and vandalism category encompassed different types of robbery

such as counterfeiting and theft at gunpoint. The category titled reputation consisted of stories

about people who had falsely tarnished the reputations of others. For example,

On Saturday laft, a Judges Warrant was iffued for apprehending of Parker the Informer,

who ftands indicted at the Old Baily for feveral henious Crimes, on the evidence of thefe

People whom he had employd to give false Informations againft for retailing Spiritous

Liquors, contrary to Law (Leeds Mercury, October 17, 1738).

The reputation category also included stories about persons fighting to clear or improvetheir own reputations. For example, the following headline from the May 13, 1881 New York

World: Atoning for Many Sins The good Michael Dunn is doing after serving 35 years

in prison accompanies a story of a former prisoner running a halfway house to help undo

the wrong he had done earlier in his life.

The marital/courtship anomalies category included stories such as one from the October

21, 1816 Montreal Gazette about an old gentleman of 84 who took to the altar with a

young damsel of about 15, or this headline from the New York World, January 14, 1921:

Best Man and Fiance Wed While He Waits. A further example of marital/courtship

anomalies appears in the Boston Evening Post:

On Sunday Morning an odd Affair happend . . . where a young Man and Woman (Country

People and very well drefsd) came to be marryd; but before the Minifter had half performd

the Ceremony the Woman was deliverd of a Daughter (October 6, 1735).



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An example of the heroism/altruism category is given in Fig. 1. The taking a stand/fighting

backcategory is illustrated in the headline Pickpocket Smacked by Woman at Race Trackfrom the April 6, 1926 Manchester Guardian.

Lastly, stories in the miscellaneous category described bizarre or unusual events; for

example, a story of a man who became stuck in a log with the rabbit he was hunting. For 24

hours the hunter and the hunted were confined within the narrow limits of their prison

(Toronto Star, January 10, 1898).

The miscellaneous category also contained stories about people caught breaking specific

rules. Note that prior to 1950, such infractions often involved innocuous by-laws (e.g., no

riding bicycles on the sidewalk). During the latter part of the twentieth century the majority of

rule infractions involved illegal drug trafficking. We declined to include drug trafficking in

our robbery category because the victims are often willing participants and the behavioritself is differentially prosecuted across cultures.

The number of stories in each category was counted for each of the six time periods. The

categories were then ranked based on the number of stories each contained; such rankings

were compiled within each of the six time periods. To illustrate, if 10 murder and 5 robbery

stories were collected in time period A, then the murder category would be ranked 1,

or most frequent, and the robbery category would be ranked 2, or less frequent. This

ranking might be reversed in time period B if there were fewer murder than robbery stories

during this period. Thus, each category was assigned six independent rankings, one for each

time period.The category rankings within each time period were compared using the Kendall

coefficient of concordance (Siegel, 1956), which tested whether there was general agreement

in the order in which the content categories were ranked across the six time periods. The null

hypothesis was that the category rankings were random across time periods. In essence, we

were testing whether the character of sensational news in eight different cultures has changed

within the past 300 years.

Fig. 1. Example from the altruism category, Boston Evening Post, October 6, 1735.



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3. Results

A total of 736 stories were sampled and sorted into 12 distinct categories (see Table 1). The

categories consisted of the following: murder/physical assault; robbery/vandalism; accidental

or natural injury/death; altruism/heroism; suicide/self-inflicted injury; abandoned/destitute

family; harm to a child; sexual assault/rape; taking a stand/fighting back; reputation; marital/

courtship anomalies; and miscellaneous stories.

For each of the six time periods, the 12 categories were given a rank based on the number

of stories in each. These rankings are shown in Table 1. The six independent groups of

rankings were analyzed using Kendalls coefficient of concordance. The resulting value

(0.696, df= 11, P< .00001) demonstrated highly significant concordance among the rankings

across the different time periods. In short, the same general topics emerged in news stories

from each of the six time periods, and the prevalence of stories in each of the categories

remained similar over time.

4. Discussion

Our research demonstrates that the topics of front-page news stories about average people

in eight cultures have varied little over the past 300 years. The stability in their ranking over

Table 1

Rankings of 12 newspaper story categories based on frequency counts over six time periods

Time period Overall

Category 17001750 17511800 18011850 18511900 19011950 19512001 ranking

Accidental/natural

injury/death

2.0 2.0 2.0 1.0 1.5 2.0 1

Murder/physical

assault

4.0 3.0 3.0 2.0 1.5 1.0 2

Robbery/vandalism 1.0 1.0 1.0 3.0 4.5 5.0 3

Reputation 3.0 5.0 4.0 6.0 9.0 4.0 4

Miscellaneous 6.0 4.0 6.5 4.0 7.0 7.0 5

Heroism/altruism 9.0 7.0 6.5 9.5 3.0 6.0 6

Suicide/self-inflictedinjury

7.5 7.0 6.5 6.0 7.0 11.0 7

Marital courtship/

anomalies

5.0 7.0 11.0 6.0 7.0 9.5 8.5

Harm to child 11.0 11.0 11.0 8.0 4.5 3.0 8.5

Abandoned/destitute

family

11.0 9.0 6.5 9.5 11.5 12.0 10

Taking a stand/fighting

back

7.5 11.0 11.0 11.5 10.0 9.5 11

Rape/sexual assault 11.0 11.0 9.0 11.5 11.5 8.0 12

Note: The lower the rank, the higher the frequency of stories in that category.



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time suggests that these topics have not been socially constructed on the basis of time or local

cultural values. Moreover, an examination of these topics the essence of sensational news suggests that they are strikingly similar to issues that evolutionary psychology identifies as

having influenced the success of humans in the EEA; e.g., altruism, reputation, cheater

detection, violence, reproductive strategies, and the treatment of offspring (Gaulin &

McBurney, 2001; Palmer & Palmer, 2002).

Why does this sort of news about other people interest most individuals? For example,

why should the suicide of a woman, who jumped into a pit of crocodiles in Thailand,

interest a woman in Toronto, Canada? Why should the possibility of Escherichia coli

contamination in a McDonalds restaurant in the UK concern a man in Yonkers, New York?

From an evolutionary point of view, the emotional impact of these stories makes sense. Our

ancestors would likely have increased their reproductive success by gaining certain kinds ofinformation about the world around them. Thus, stories about animal attacks, deadly

parasites and tainted food sources remain salient topics, even millions of years after their

likelihood of occurrence has become marginal in industrialized nations. Note that such

stories (e.g., animal attacks) did not occur frequently enough in our sample to warrant a

separate category; however, when such events did occur, they invariably resulted in

coverage as front-page news.

In addition to physical threats to human existence, we should not underestimate the

role of social factors on success in the EEA. Membership in a group was essential to

survival and knowledge of others in the group would increase an individuals ability toboth survive and reproduce (Pinker, 1997). Although newspapers did not exist in the

EEA, gossiping probably did (Dunbar, 1996). Indeed, Dunbar has argued that language

evolved not to serve higher intellectual functions, but to allow communication about

social information.

There are two unmistakable parallels between gossip and sensationalism. (1) Just as

sensational news is widely sought yet publicly disdained, so too does gossip trigger an

ambivalent response. As Barkow (1992) notes, . . . gossip may at times be publicly

disvalued and disowned, but it remains a favorite pastime . . . in all human societies (p.

628). Similarly, Boyer (2001) argues that gossip is practiced everywhere, enjoyedeverywhere, and despised everywhere. (2) The topics people gossip and tell stories about

across a wide range of cultures (e.g., Abrahams, 1970; Gluckman, 1963; Haviland, 1977;

Scalise-Sugiyama, 1996) are virtually identical to the categories that emerged in our

analysis of sensational news stories. Many of the categories in our analysis can be

described as forms of rule breaking or cheating. The importance of attending to information

about cheaters has been demonstrated by Enquist and Leimar (1993) who found that

cheaters were less successful in a community of cooperators when those cooperators can

communicate with each other. Both gossip and sensational news are effective strategies for

disseminating information about the behavior of group members and not allowing cheaters

to remain anonymous.The content of sensational news is often precisely what one needs to keep track of persons

with whom one might be in competition for resources. Boyer (2001) has described the themes

that attract our attention as topics of adaptive value, such as peoples status, resources and



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sex. In the present study, categories such as accidental injury and death, altruism,

suicide, and those who take a stand or fight back help to define a social hierarchy.Information in the abandoned or destitute families category would allow for more

informed decisions about mate selection and also help to solidify group norms. The final

news story category, reputation, provides humans with a tool to manage the manner in

which they are perceived by other group members (Bergmann, 1993).

Sensational news stories may appeal to humans because they trigger an evolved tendency

to attend to information that could have increased a humans reproductive fitness in the EEA.

The emergence of newspapers and, with them, sensational news may simply reflect a

technological change in the manner in which certain categories of information are transmit-

ted. The fundamental attraction of such news to humans, even in large, virtually anonymous

social groups, remains unchanged.

Appendix A. Year(s) of publication examined for each paper sampled

Time period Region Newspaper Year(s) of publication examined

17001750 UK Penny London Post 1733

UK Leeds Mercury 1738

USA Boston Evening Post 1735

17511800 UK London Morning Penny Post 1751UK Leeds Mercury 1769

USA Boston Evening Post 1756

18011850 UK Leeds Mercury 1814, 1815

USA New York Tribune 1842

Canada Montreal Gazette 1816, 1817

18511900 UK Leeds Mercury 1859

USA New York Times 1897, 1898

USA New York World 1881

Canada Toronto Star 1898Canada Toronto World 1898

Canada Ottawa Citizen 1884, 1892

France Le Temps 1861

France Le Figaro 1887

19011950 UK Manchester Guardian 1926

USA New York Times 1908

USA New York World 1920, 1921

Canada Toronto Star 1929, 1949

France Le Temps 1901

19512001 UK The Guardian 1995USA Detroit Free Press 1970

Canada Calgary Herald 2001

Germany Die Welt 2001



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Note: In the "Region" column "UK" stands for United Kingdom and "USA" stands for United States of America.


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