No one likes bad news, but for some people, no news is worse. People who are mildly neurotic are stressed by uncertainty even more than by bad news, a new study finds.

Psychologists have long known that bad news grabs attention, making its recipients take notice, while good news often is given short shrift in the brain. Scientists have explained the phenomenon as a survival mechanism, a part of the brain’s wiring adapted to warn of dangers or threats.

But researchers at the University of Toronto wanted to learn more about how people respond to uncertainty  a lack of information or information that isn’t well understood. Forty-one young men and women took a test designed to assess how neurotic they were, then were fitted with electrode caps that measured brain activity as they completed certain tasks. As a way of monitoring stress, the investigators tracked neural activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the brain involved in conflict, uncertainty and monitoring errors.

The participants later were asked to respond when they thought a second had passed since a symbol had appeared on a computer monitor. After responding, they received feedback on the monitor in the form of a plus sign indicating a job well done, a minus sign indicating improvement was needed, or a question mark with no further explanation. The subjects who had scored higher on the neuroticism scale demonstrated more brain activity in response to uncertain feedback than to negative feedback, the researchers found.