Doom Messaging Goes Viral But Fails to Motivate Action — SkimNews
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- Jay Van Bavel, professor of psychology and neural science at NYU, argues that doomerism creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by breeding helplessness rather than galvanizing action, warning that feelings of doom make inaction feel sensible.
- The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock, introduced in 1947 at seven minutes to midnight, now stands at 85 seconds to midnight — a vivid example in a long tradition of crisis communication.
- Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher, recently made headlines arguing frontier AI models pose an existential risk, cited by Van Bavel as a case in point of the doomer approach he critiques.
- An analysis of 22,743 A/B headline tests on Upworthy.com found each additional negative word in a headline increased clicks by 2.3%, quantifying the negativity bias that dominates online news.
- A study of 59,440 participants across 63 countries testing 11 climate messages found a doom-laden passage on 'terrors' of warming was the most widely shared online but the single worst at spurring real mitigation like planting trees.
- A message emphasizing 99% scientific consensus outperformed doomerism on every measured outcome except internet sharing, supporting sober, fact-based communication over alarmism.
- Research by Danielle Goldwert, Van Bavel's PhD student, found that highlighting emotional benefits of climate action like hope and connection significantly increased political participation, advocacy, donations, and lifestyle change.
Why it matters: Across 59,440 study participants and 22,743 headline experiments, the data shows that the most viral crisis messages are the least effective at producing real-world behavior change. For advocates, journalists, and AI-risk communicators who default to alarmism — under the long-standing 'if it bleeds, it leads' logic — the findings undercut the very mobilizing impact those alarming messages claim to deliver.
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