Angela M. Legg, PhD
Angela M. Legg, PhD, assistant professor of psychology, Pace University, Pleasantville, New York. Her research was conducted at the University of California, Riverside, and published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
How many times have you asked—or been asked—the question, “Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?” Because it’s uncomfortable to give or receive bad news, people generally try to find some good to blend in, hoping to take the bite out the bad.
But where the good news is placed in the conversation—at the beginning or the end—has a lot to do with how the news-giver feels delivering the news…and how the news-recipient responds to it.
The problem: What’s best for the news-giver often is not best for the news-recipient. Fortunately, a new study reveals ways to make this difficult process better for both sides…
Researchers conducted a series of three experiments to examine people’s preferences for the order in which bad news and good news are delivered and received, and how this order affects the outcome of the conversation.
Experiment 1: Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups and were told that they would either be giving or receiving the results of a bogus “personality test” that supposedly revealed both positive and negative traits. Then they were asked which set of news—the good personality traits or the bad—they wished to deliver or receive first and why. (At this stage, no news was actually given or received—participants simply indicated their preferences.)
Results: 54% of news-givers said that they would rather give the good news first, and their reasons for doing so generally were focused on their own feelings—e.g., I’m uncomfortable giving bad news first. However, news-recipients overwhelmingly said that they would prefer to get the bad news first, with 78% of participants opting for this. Among their reasons were, It makes me feel better…and I like to end on a high note.
Experiment 2: The researchers wanted to see whether certain tactics could help news-givers be more empathetic and bring their behaviors into alignment with the emotional needs of news-recipients. Participants were asked to deliver the results of a “personality test” that supposedly revealed both bad and good traits—and this time the news really did get delivered. One group of news-givers got no instructions, being told that they could deliver the bad and good news in whichever sequence they preferred. A second group was asked to keep the news-recipients’ perspective in mind (“Place yourself in the other person’s shoes”) when deciding how to deliver the news. A third group was explicitly told that the news-recipients might feel hurt, sad or upset to hear about their negative personality traits and was instructed to protect the news-recipients’ emotions when delivering the news.
Results: 68% of news-givers who got no instructions led with the good news (not surprising, since in the previous experiment, most news-givers had said I’m uncomfortable giving bad news first). In contrast, the majority of participants in both the “perspective-taking” group and the “emotion-protecting” group led with the bad news most of the time.
What this means: Simply by consciously thinking about the news-recipients’ feelings, news-givers can be less focused on their own comfort and more sensitive to the emotions of others.
Experiment 3: Finally, the researchers focused on how the sequence of news delivery affected the news-recipients’ emotions and behaviors—and here things got surprising! Again, participants believed that they were hearing the results of a personality test, with some good traits and some bad traits. Participants were randomly assigned to hear either the good news or bad news first. After hearing the first set of news and again after the second set of news, participants completed a survey about their mood and degree of worry. Then, to assess how behavior might be affected by the news sequence, they were asked whether they preferred to do a mindless task (stapling papers) or to watch a short video about how to improve their personalities.
Results: Participants who received the bad news first showed an upward emotional trajectory, with mood improving and worry decreasing after they heard the second and final set of news—indicating that they did indeed end on a high note. In contrast, those who heard the good news first had a downward emotional trajectory, developing a worse mood and becoming more worried over the course of the experiment.
Neither of those results was surprising, and you might think this means that bad-news-first is always the way to go—but wait! First consider the fact that participants who heard the bad news first (and thus suffered less emotionally) also were less motivated to make positive changes in their own behavior. Less than half of the bad-news-first group opted to watch the video that could help them improve their personalities…whereas about two-thirds of those in the good-news-first group, who experienced more worry and worse mood, chose to watch the self-improvement video.
What this means: If the bad news you need to deliver or receive is something about which nothing can be done (e.g., the death of a pet), it’s best to put the bad news first and follow with some kind of good news—to buffer the emotional blow. However, if the bad news can and should trigger some kind of behavioral change (e.g., when a scary medical problem could be improved by adopting a better diet), it’s best to put the bad news last—to motivate needed change.
