Bad things about someone mesmerise us: Study

A new research has revealed why people are more interested in negative gossip about someone than positive things, such as talks of Arnold Schwarzenegger's alleged love child or the latest steamy details in the 'IMF sex scandal'.

They found that our brains compel us to stare longer at someone's face if we've heard something negative about them, reported the Daily Mail.

To reach their conclusions, scientists showed study participants pictures of ordinary-looking strangers, paired with 'social information' that was either positive, negative or neutral.
 
Negative information included such phrases as 'She is a cheater', and 'She threw a chair at somebody'.

Then the researchers showed the same pictures in a 'binocular rivalry' test, in which they showed each eye a different picture.

It turned out that people tended to spend much more time concentrating on the image associated with negative information, versus one paired with positive or neutral information.

The study appears in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal 'Science'.