Mum Effect

Despite the folk wisdom that “no news is good news,” almost everyone is reluctant to communicate bad news. For example, your best friend, Tom, has applied for a job that he wants very badly. You learn that he will definitely be offered the job. You can hardly wait to tell him the good news. You will take pleasure in letting Tom know all the details. Now, contrast this with your feelings if you learn that Tom will definitely not get the job he wants so much. In this case, you probably feel awful and do not look forward to communicating the news to Tom. You might even decide to say nothing about what you found out. This reluctance to communicate bad news is very strong under a large variety of types of news, potential recipients, and circumstances. The reluctance to communicate bad news is so general and so robust that it has been given its own name: the MUM effect. When it comes to bad news, it seems that, indeed, “Mum's the word.”

Despite its robustness, the reluctance to communicate bad news is not universal. Anyone who has paid attention to the news media can't help forming the impression that bad news is reported with alacrity. Our experience with rumors or gossip or urban myths also suggests that there is no bias against communicating bad news. So, the MUM effect seems to be restricted to situations in which the news affects the well-being of the potential recipient. In one study, for example, participants learned that there was a telephone message telling another participant to call home right away about some good news or about some bad news. When given the opportunity to communicate the message to the person for whom the message was intended, participants were more likely to mention the good news than the bad news. Interestingly, however, this difference disappeared when the participants were given the opportunity to communicate to a bystander. In fact, participants were slightly more likely to mention the bad news than the good news to a bystander. The implication of this is sobering: The person who is affected by the bad news is less likely to learn about it than is a bystander!