Health Research in the Media

 

            Sometimes a media organization will take a scholarly article and report something from it they think will get more attention than the rest of its contents.  Other times, their reporting is more consistent with the scholarly findings.  In this assignment, I have picked a random article from Psychology Today and compared it to the original article it references.  The idea is to see if any distortion or sensationalism was used by the media company to popularize its contents.

            The media article I chose, titled “4 Traits of Psychologically ‘Healthy’ People”, seeks to popularize what the most likely traits are in people who are the most psychologically healthy.  In this article, the writer Mark Travers relays information from a team of researchers: “They found that high levels of openness to feelings, positive emotions, and straightforwardness, combined with low levels of neuroticism, were most indicative of a healthy personality” (Travers, 2020).  The article then provides a full list of traits that are ranked according to their likelihood of describing a healthy person.  A few other traits high on the list are competence, altruism, and activity.  At the bottom of the list are traits that are not as likely to describe a healthy person: hostility, depressiveness, vulnerability, anxiousness.

            The article Travers references, “The Healthy Personality from a Basic Trait Perspective”, also sought to discover these traits.  It used the Revised N.E.O. Personality Inventory system of traits, which has 30 facets among five domains (a.k.a. the Five-Factor Model).  Several samples were taken from different groups, including personality trait experts and undergraduate students, who were asked to rank these traits on a scale of 1-5.  The result was the list that ranked these traits from high to low, based on the mean values of each sample.

            The results of this study can be attributed to a combination of factors, including biological, psychological, and environmental.  While the traits may all be described as psychological, the factors that characterize them can come from either source.  A person may be biologically gifted with these traits; others might have been raised in an environment that shaped them; still others might have acquired them psychologically- through the process of learning or adopting belief-despite not being blessed with good genes or being raised in a proper environment.

            The data presented in the scholarly article is correlational rather than experimental.  This is because the researchers did not introduce a change to a group to monitor its effects.  They simply used the data from surveys to calculate the most likely traits of a healthy person.  Correlational data can only justify claims made in relation to two variables, while scientific data can justify more assertive, concrete ones.  There is greater evidence for causation when using scientific data, so these articles are not as groundbreaking as others.

            Both these articles provide data that have social and applied implications.  People who read about this data might be inspired to live better, so that they can exhibit the traits of a healthier person.  The data can be useful to society if enough people are informed about these findings.  However, the fact that this is a correlational study probably means it will not reach as many people as an experimental study would: or that readers will not take it as seriously, especially in the scientific community.

            Both articles are similar in that they document the results of the same study.  But the media article only seems to restate the first half of the abstract, copying it verbatim at times.  They differ in that the media article published only one of the results from the study, while the scholarly one had an additional series of studies that were never even mentioned by the media one.  This second series of studies was a follow-up to the first, which asked the same question to find other traits that are not part of the Five Factor Model.  They created a healthy personality index to examine other traits that participants with high scores on psychological health possess.  It found that these individuals had “high self-esteem, good self-regulatory skills, an optimistic outlook on the world, and a clear and stable self-view.  These individuals were low in aggression and meanness, unlikely to exploit others, and were relatively immune to stress and self-sufficient” (Bleidorn et al, 2020, pg. 1).

            Fortunately, the media story did not distort or sensationalize any information, but it did omit the second series of studies.  This segment seems just as important as the first, for there are many traits it touched on that are not covered in the Five-Factor Model.  These traits have strong correlations that describe the healthiest minds and should not have been left out of the media article.  My impression of the scientific findings was enhanced by this additional information; it showed that the four traits highlighted in the media story are not sufficient to summarize the research. 

Factors that may have influenced the decision to only list four traits from the first study are efficiency and simplicity.  It is faster for a writer, who may be trying to optimize their (or the company’s) profits, to report on an article when only one of the studies in it is being examined.  Also, it is probably easier to grab the attention of the reader if the headline is kept simple.  “The Four Traits of Psychologically ‘Healthy’ People” will probably attract more readers than “Two Studies Show High Correlation Among Traits…”.  This is not just because it is a simpler title, but because it is a concrete statement that does not involve the word ‘correlation’.

            Health research in the popular press is plagued by overhyped remedies that are often scientifically inaccurate.  Many media articles on health are written with emotionally charged headlines that are meant to grab the reader’s attention, simply to gain readership; or, in the instance of online readers, clicks and likes.  Others are probably trying to sell a product or regimen, like the “lose weight fast” diet programs. 

I was lucky to choose an article that did not distort any findings, though I do feel they were under-reported and therefore misleading.  In hindsight, I probably should have chosen a more controversial article, as this would have helped point out the problems with media distortion.  Nonetheless I did learn that even a reputable source like Psychology Today can gloss over the findings of a scholarly article.  In the interest of earning money and getting more clicks, they will summarize a scholarly article with minimal information that swiftly moves the reader along to the next one.  Journalistic integrity should allow for more detailed reporting to make sure all the bases of a study are covered.  Otherwise, we risk reading false information that could have a tremendous impact on the general health of people in a society.

References

 Bleidorn et al.  (2020).  The Healthy Personality from a Basic Trait Perspective.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  118(6), 1207-1225.  https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000231

 Mark Travers.  4 Traits of Psychologically “Healthy” People.  November 15, 2020.  Psychology Today.  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202011/4-traits-psychologically-healthy-people?eml