Why are we humans so susceptible to the doom and gloom of the news? Two reasons.

The first is what psychologists call negativity bias: we’re more attuned to the bad than the good. Back in our hunting and gathering days, we were better off being frightened of a spider or a snake a hundred times too often than one time too few. Too much fear wouldn’t kill you; too little surely would.

Second, we’re also burdened with an availability bias. If we can easily recall examples of a given thing, we assume that thing is relatively common. The fact that we’re bombarded daily with horrific stories about aircraft disasters, child snatchers and beheadings — which tend to lodge in the memory — completely skews our view of the world.

In this digital age, the news we’re being fed is only getting more extreme. In the old days, journalists didn’t know much about their individual readers. They wrote for the masses. But the people behind Facebook, Twitter and Google know you well. They know what shocks and horrifies you, they know what makes you click. They know how to grab your attention and hold it so they can serve you the most lucrative helping of personalised ads. This modern media frenzy is nothing less than an assault on the mundane. Because, let’s be honest, the lives of most people are pretty predictable. Nice, but boring. So while we’d prefer having nice neighbours with boring lives, ‘boring’ won’t make you sit up and take notice. ‘Nice’ doesn’t sell ads. And so Silicon Valley keeps dishing us up ever more sensational clickbait, knowing full well, as a Swiss novelist once quipped, that “News is to the mind what sugar is to the body.”

[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from Humankind: A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2021.]

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the author’s arguments?

The correct answer is Behavioural traits that helped us in the days when we were hunter-gatherers are no longer found in modern-day humans.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

1. Understand the Author's Argument:

The author argues that humans are highly susceptible to negative and sensational news due to two main psychological biases:

- Negativity Bias: The author explains this bias by tracing it back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, stating that being attuned to bad things (like fear of spiders or snakes) helped them survive. The implicit premise is that this evolutionary trait persists in modern humans, making us attuned to bad news today.

- Availability Bias: Easily recalled horrific events skew our perception, making us think bad things are common.

2. Analyze what weakens the argument:

To weaken the author's explanation of negativity bias, an option should attack the link between ancient hunter-gatherer evolutionary traits and modern human behavior.

3. Evaluate the Options:

- Option 1 ("Behavioural traits that helped us in the days when we were hunter-gatherers continue to be present in modern-day humans."): This supports/strengthens the author's premise that hunter-gatherer survival mechanisms influence modern humans.

- Option 2 ("Behavioural traits that helped us in the days when we were hunter-gatherers are no longer found in modern-day humans."): If hunter-gatherer behavioral traits are no longer present in modern humans, then the author's explanation for negativity bias (attributing our susceptibility to bad news to hunter-gatherer survival traits) completely breaks down. This directly weakens the argument.

- Option 3 ("The negativity bias makes us more likely to be affected by depressing or sad news."): This reinforces/supports the author's claim about negativity bias.

- Option 4 ("We have certain behavioural characteristics that affect how we perceive and are affected by sad news."): This is a general statement that agrees with the author's premises, so it does not weaken the passage.

Therefore, Option 2 is the statement that most strongly weakens the author's arguments.