Good news, Bad news

Okay, a while back I read an article about the effects of good news and bad news to a recipient. It goes like this: If you have both a bad news and a good news to relay to someone, like a friend, a family member, an acquaintance, etc–that it is better to tell the good news first before the bad one so that the impact of hearing the bad news–i.e., shock, depression, sadness, torment, disappointment, anger, discouragement, shame, etc—could be diminished or neutralized to a certain degree. Now, this may sound full of kaka, but I wish I still had the original article so I could just quote it verbatim here.

I believe in this finding by the way because once it so happened that a friend of mine from school arrived to deliver two pieces of information to me—one good news and the other was really disappointing. I opted for the good news first. I believe it worked for me. Had I heard the disappointing news first, I would have just sunk into depression at that moment and not care about anything else, including finding out about the other news.

Sound stupid? Just try it out if you happened to be in this situation.

I’ve used that strategy ever since I was 12 and had to show grades to my parents

I think you’re right, if your mind is already occupied with the good news, the bad news doesn’t sink in as fast, so you’re not hit as hard by it. This way you can’t think about it in a more objective way.

on a beautiful day, Bill Clinton was looking out from his office window and saw some bad words about himself written on the snow. he ordered investigation and got the following result:
the reporter told president Clinton that there are good news and bad news. clinton used your strategy and the reporter said “the culprit has been found, he wrote the words with his pee.”.
the bad news is “it was in Hilary’s hand”

I think it utterly depends on what type of person you are, pessimists want to hear the bad news first, just for the sake of relishing in the misery, the optimists vice versa. am I not right? well, I agree it does make the difference what you hear first.