Why humans value sensational news: An evolutionary perspective

Although it draws nearly universal disdain, sensational news continues to attract a wide audience for reasons that are not fully understood. We examined sensational front-page newspaper stories from eight countries, published between 1700 and 2001. The 736 stories that we collected were sorted thematically, and 12 categories emerged. An analysis of the frequency of stories within these categories demonstrates relative stability in their ranking over time and place, suggesting that the content of sensational news is not socially constructed. The categories that emerged correspond to major themes in evolutionary psychology (e.g., altruism, cheater detection, reputation, treatment of offspring). We propose that, like gossip, sensational news stories may trigger an evolved tendency to attend to categories of information that increased reproductive fitness in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA).