How does political news affect moods? New study in young doctors shows real-time effects

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-12/mm-u-hdp120619.php

News Release 9-Dec-2019
Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan

•••••

The new paper focuses on daily mood ratings from 2,345 interns who were in their first year of training at American hospitals anytime between mid-2016 and late 2018, and how they changed in the immediate aftermath of major national and world events.

Three events -- the 2016 U.S. election, the 2017 U.S. presidential inauguration, and the failure of a federal spending bill to fund a Mexican border wall - were followed by the largest collective changes in mood.

The first of these events was actually associated with a drop in mood larger than the drop that interns experienced in the first weeks of their intense training. The second led to a sizable mood drop, while the third led to a collective mood boost.

The authors note in an accompanying commentary, the decline in mood immediately after the election was four times greater than any other day they had tracked, and female interns' mood drop was twice as large as that seen among male interns. The study group was 55% female, a slightly higher percentage than the current generation of recent medical school graduates.

Two-thirds of the major political events in the study period prompted significant changes in interns' moods. No non-political event during the study period - not mass shootings, hurricanes, wildfires, a royal wedding or a solar eclipse - affected interns' moods.

•••••