No news is good news, right? Not necessarily, University of Toronto researchers found, according to the New York Times.
In fact, it's better to get bad news than no news at all, the newspaper reports, because not knowing something may increase anxiety and stress.
The researchers hooked up 41 men and women to electrode caps and asked them to perform tasks, while their neural activity was monitored, the Times reports.
The highest neuron response was when the computer feedback issued a question mark instead of a plus sign (job well done) or a minus sign (needs improvement). The question mark gave no indication of what was required next.
This brain activity indicated that being uncertain about an outcome among people who are neurotic is worse than actually receiving bad news. "Basically the motto of the highly neurotic person is, 'Better the devil you know than the devil you don't,' " Jacob Hirsch, the study's lead author, told the Times. – (HealthDay News, November 2008)