News order preferenceThe order of news delivery affects how happy people are and how motivated they are to change

Participants in this experiment were told they were taking part in a study seeking to examine college students’ personalities

They were asked to complete a personality test and were then shown and given feedback on their results

All participants received the same fake test results but they were either presented as good news followed by bad news (GNBN) or the reverse (BNGN)

Please complete the personality test on the screen

Before I share your results, please complete this short questionnaire

I’m afraid you scored in the 25th percentile for stability but you scored in the 90th percentile for altruistic motivations

I think my personality sounds ok

Please complete the personality test on the screen

Before I share your results, please complete this short questionnaire

So you scored in the 90th percentile for altruistic motivations but I’m afraid you scored in the 25th percentile for stability

That’s not very good, I should

do something to improve that

After receiving their feedback participants were asked a series of questions to assess their mood, perception of their results and intention to improve their personality

They were then offered an opportunity to watch an interactive video to help them improve their personality – used as a measure of immediate behaviour change

I’m feeling quite good

about myself, I should continue

as I am

I should watch that video to see what I

can learn about improving myself

People who were given the bad news followed by the good news (BNGN) felt more positive about their results and reported a better mood than those given the good news followed by the bad news (GNBN)

However those in the GNBN condition had greater intentions to change their behaviour and were more likely to ask to watch the improvement video

Conclusions

1. The order in which news is presented affects how people feel and how they behave

2. If you want people to feel good you should save the good news until the end

3. However if you want people to change their behaviour you should save the bad news until the end

ReferenceDo You Want the Good News of the Bad News First? The Nature and Consequences of News Order Preferences Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin October 31, 2013 Angela Legg, Kate Sweeny