You have a good case that pessimistic rhetoric is effective, but I’d hesitate to conclude that pessimistic bias is primarily caused by exposure to such rhetoric.
It’s an interesting question how to test this. Do people in controlled-media states consistently think things are getting worse? Do hunter-gatherers?
Yeah, I’m not sure about that either. But it strikes me as one possible mechanism among others that could cause pessimism bias.
Another is this: suppose that the world is getting better in some ways, and worse in others. If you are loss-averse, you’re going to weigh the losses more heavily than the gains. This means that you will think that the world is getting worse even though it is not for someone who is not loss-averse (i.e. biased against gains).
You have a good case that pessimistic rhetoric is effective, but I’d hesitate to conclude that pessimistic bias is primarily caused by exposure to such rhetoric.
It’s an interesting question how to test this. Do people in controlled-media states consistently think things are getting worse? Do hunter-gatherers?
Yeah, I’m not sure about that either. But it strikes me as one possible mechanism among others that could cause pessimism bias.
Another is this: suppose that the world is getting better in some ways, and worse in others. If you are loss-averse, you’re going to weigh the losses more heavily than the gains. This means that you will think that the world is getting worse even though it is not for someone who is not loss-averse (i.e. biased against gains).