Why does bad news grab (an keep!) our attention? New research from the Cognitive Communication Science Lab at UC Davis sheds light on how emotionally charged news headlines influence the way we make decisions.

At the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS), Dr. Richard Huskey and collaborators are presenting findings from a two-part study that combines computational modeling and fMRI. The research shows that people are more likely to select news headlines that are negatively valenced and high in arousal. This preference is driven by faster evidence accumulation in the brain, measured by what decision scientists call drift rate, and is reflected in neural activity in key subcortical decision-making regions.

The team will present a Blitz Talk (Session #2) and a poster (P2-A-5) during SANS 2025 in Chicago on Friday, April 25.

Gong, X., Ulusoy, E., Riggs, E., Kee, R., Zhao, Z., Snyder, A., Coronel, J., Eden, A., Boydstun, A., & Huskey, R. (2025, April). Negatively Valenced and High-Arousal News Headlines Drive Preferential Evidence Accumulation and Influence Selection Behavior. SANS Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL.