I recently asked LinkedIn followers two questions:
- "If someone has good news and bad news, do you want to hear the good news first, or the bad?"
- "If you have good news and bad news to share, do you tend to start with the good news, or the bad?"
Oddly enough, most people said they want to hear the bad news first -- even though most people say they tend to share the good news first.
Or maybe not so oddly. A 2013 study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that most people prefer to share the good news first, a news-order delivery approach the researchers call "priming emotion-protection." (Or in non researcher-speak, "This will probably go badly... so I better ease into it."
