Imagine that you have received two letters in the mail. One of them is a traffic ticket for speeding and the other is a letter from a dear friend you haven’t seen in a while. Which one would you open first?
In reality, we spend a good part of our lives making decisions of this type. And the truth is that the way we organize positive and negative activities or news has a very important impact on how we will feel during the following hours.
A novel study conducted at the University of Seoul gave participants pairs of everyday events, some were happy and others were depressing. And they were asked to order them depending on which ones they preferred to experience first and which ones later and they were even allowed to determine how much time they wanted to pass between one event and another.
The experiment revealed that most people do not want negative and positive events to occur on the same day. This tells us that we tend to extend both suffering and pleasure, in this way we can recover from pain and can taste joy better.
Since life almost never bends to our desires, the researchers decided to recreate it as much as possible and that is why they asked the participants to decide the order of events, on the same day. Thus, it was seen that 3/4 of the people preferred to receive the bad news first. An option that is not entirely strange since we think that by receiving the happy news at the end, it will erase the influence of the negative news.
It is a process quite similar to when we watch a horror film and then watch a comedy to go to bed without fear. Obviously, this is a strategy that does not always work since it will depend on the emotional meaning of the events. In other words, if the negative news is very bad, it will be difficult for it to be overshadowed by positive news.
A second result that emerged from this experiment was that people who reported higher rates of happiness tended to employ an identical strategy: seeking support from friends after receiving bad news.
On the contrary, people who reported higher levels of depression and unhappiness showed a tendency to balance bad news or a loss with a gain in the same sector. That is, if they had a financial loss, they focused on obtaining positive economic results with other actions, perhaps betting on other products.
What conclusions can we draw from all this?
First of all, it is a good strategy to know the bad news first and then the good news, but this technique will not have an effect unless both news have the same emotional meaning.
Secondly, we should not fight bad news or events by trying to achieve positive results in that area. A much more effective and simple strategy is to share with friends or friends.
Reference:
Sul, S.; Kim, J. & Choi, I. (2012) Subjective Well-Being and Hedonic Editing: How Happy People Maximize Joint Outcomes of Loss and Gain. Journal of Happiness Studies.
