Promoting a sense of global community.

Abstract

It has been argued that the international cooperation needed to deal with global problems requires the development of a global community. We hypothesized that the sense of belonging to such a community would be promoted if we could increase a general sense of hopefulness about humanity and that such a sense of hopefulness would be influenced by the news to which persons are subjected. Participants were asked to visit news websites with different emotional tones. Those sent to a typical news site or to a fashion site showed a small but significant decrease in their sense of global community. Those sent to a nongovernmental organization (NGO) website featuring solutions-oriented news showed a significant increase. The latter site provoked greater admiration, appreciation, and hope, and less anger, disgust, and fear. Increase in a sense of global community was predicted by the extent to which the NGO site provoked both admiration and fear.