Trial reportPloS one2021
Staying informed without a cost: No effect of positive news media on stress reactivity, memory and affect in young adults.
Trial report in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Staying informed without a cost: No effect of positive news media on stress reactivity, memory and affect in young adults.PloS one · 2021Trial
- Is there a female-male self-selection bias in TSST-based reactive stress research?Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Evaluating post-traumatic growth among healthcare workers.AIMS public health · 2025Article
- Negative online news articles are shared more to social media.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Social Media News Headlines and Their Influence on Well-Being: Emotional States, Emotion Regulation, and Resilience.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2024Article
- Open and reproducible science practices in psychoneuroendocrinology: Opportunities to foster scientific progress.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionWe read, see and hear news from various media sources every day. A large majority of the news is negative. A previous study from our laboratory showed that reading negative news is associated with both increased stress reactivity (measured via the stress hormone cortisol) and recall of the negative news segments in women.
objectivesThe present study investigated the effects of positive news on cortisol stress reactivity, memory and affect using a methodology highly similar to the study on negative news that was previously used by our team.
methodsSixty-two healthy participants aged between 18 and 35 years (81% women) were randomly exposed to either positive or neutral news segments, followed by a laboratory stressor. We assessed participants' affect three times during the procedure and measured cortisol in saliva eight times (at 10-minute intervals). Twenty-four hours later, participants were contacted by phone to assess their recall of the news segments.
resultsResults showed that exposure to positive news, relative to neutral news, did not modulate participants' cortisol levels in response to the laboratory stressor. Positive news had no impact on memory recall of the news and did not change participants' positive or negative affect. Bayes factors suggested that these nonsignificant results are not attributable to low statistical power.
conclusionContrary to negative news, positive and neutral news do not modulate stress reactivity, memory and affect. These results suggest that people can stay informed without physiological and psychological costs when the news to which they are exposed adopt a positive or neutral approach.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.