When Good News Falls Flat
Complications in the Delivery and Reception of Good News in Pediatric Neurology
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11326468 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Keith Cox (0000-0001-8617-7541, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 88 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 45-65 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Psychology Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0190-2725 • E-ISSN: 1939-8999 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/01902725241253258 |
| OpenAlex | W4399045673 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 38 |
This article considers interactional trouble that arises when the social distribution of knowledge and interpersonal relationships come together in the delivery and reception of good news in pediatric neurology visits for video-electroencephalography testing. Contrary to common perceptions of good news as easy to deliver and receive, I find that it is occasionally fraught with hesitancy in this context. Using conversation analysis, I explore what drives this trouble and argue that some of the difficulty associated with good news in this context arises from its structure: Physicians prioritize conveying “the facts” of the news over characterizing its valence. However, parents treat physicians’ assessments of the news as critical for the news delivery. When physicians fail to evaluate the information they present, parents tend to treat news deliveries as incomplete, which not only causes difficulties in their reception of the news but also leads to protracted news deliveries
Advertising · Business · Injury prevention · Medical emergency · Poison control · Psychiatry · Suicide prevention · Ethics and Legal Issues in Pediatric Healthcare · Human Factors and Ergonomics · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Medicine · Patient-Provider Communication in Healthcare · Psychology · Social Psychology · Neurology
Structures of Social Action
Prescribing under Pressure
Presenting the Problem in Pediatric Encounters
Constituency and the Grammar of Turn Increments
Sequential Aspects of Storytelling in Conversation11This is a revised version of a paper presented at Seminars in Ethnomethodology, Graduate Center, City University of New York, April 1973. Great appreciation is extended to Doug Maynard, Candy West, Tom Wilson, Don Zimmerman, and Roger Mandlebaum.
Studies in ethnomethodology
Lectures on Conversation
Sequence Organization in Interaction
Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking
“Who knows best?”
On the systematic deployment of okay and mmhmm in academic advising sessions
Prompting Action
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
The News Delivery Sequence
Topic nomination and topic pursuit
Extreme case formulations
The Terms of Agreement
Affiliative and disaffiliative candidate understandings
Politeness
Practices and actions
The diagnostic moment
Presequences and indirection
You know as invoking alignment
A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation
The epistemics of social relations
Prosodic features of bad news and good news in conversation
On 'Labeling' in Actual Interaction
"No no no" and Other Types of Multiple Sayings in Social Interaction
Ambiguities in Action Ascription
Confirming Allusions
| Highly cited | No |
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