“Shooting The Messenger” Is A Psychological Reality – Share Bad News And People Will Like You Less

By Matthew Warren We all know the movie scene: a nervous aide has to deliver bad news to his villainous boss, stumbling over his words and incessantly apologising. For a second, it looks like he will be OK – until the boss turns around and summarily executes him. But it turns out this phenomenon of “shooting the messenger” is not just restricted to fiction. A new paper in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General has demonstrated that we do tend to take a dim view of the bearers of bad news – even when these people are simply innocent messengers.  Previous work had already shown that we often form unfavourable opinions of people who give us negative feedback. But this could be justified: the reviewer could have been unfairly biased against us, for example. Leslie John and colleagues at Harvard University wanted to take things further and find out how we view others who are simply a conduit for bad news, and who clearly have no control over the content of the message they’re sharing.  Across a series of 11 experiments, the team looked at how people responded when taking part in, or imagining, a situation where someone delivered them bad or good news. The first study confirmed that bearers of bad news are not well-liked. Participants had the chance to win an extra $2 when a research assistant picked a number from a hat, depending on whether it was odd or even. After picking the number, the research assistant handed it to a colleague – the “messenger” – to...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Social Source Type: blogs