Zhang Mei, Ding Shuheng, Liu Guofang, among others, wrote in the 12th issue of Journal of Psychology in 2021 that people often pay more attention to the processing and transmission of negative information in the generation and dissemination of network emergencies, and there is a negative bias.
Based on the characteristics of the events during their incubation, outbreak and spread stages, this study constructs a psychological mechanism model, and tests the emergence and development of negative bias in information content, information processing and information transmission through three studies.
The results show that negative bias not only occurs in the source text of network emergencies, but also in the process of individual information processing and interpersonal information transmission. It is shown that individuals have a better memory of and stronger discrimination of negative words and there is a selective transmission of negative information and negative interpretation of fuzzy information among netizens. The research is helpful to the understanding of the law of information dissemination of network emergencies, as well as to the scientific handling of public opinion crisis and innovation of network governance.