Use the PROP Method to Deliver Bad News

Source: Yan Krukov / Pexels

Most organizations fail to grasp how readers will react to even minor adjustments in organizations, prices, or services they rely on. As a result, many organizations send out routine emails or letters to convey information readers will invariably perceive as unwelcome. (See Document 1, below, for a real-life example.) Even worse, most organizations deliberately conceal negative information, believing clients will never discover it—despite the well-documented backlashes that have followed organizations concealing bad news from clients. In contrast, when organizations deliver the negative news, consumers regain their trust in them.

On the other hand, for most writers, delivering bad news is as welcome as a root canal. But you can minimize fall-out from negative news by understanding how your audience will perceive your email. Or, if you’re Old School, and the news is nuclear-meltdown-negative, send a print letter. However, regardless of which medium you choose, the PROP Method (priming and positive, rationale, options, placement) will minimize fallout and preserve company-client or even parent-teacher relationships.

Start With a P for Priming and Positive

Dozens of studies document the impact of affective priming, or how the first items we read bias our recall of even unrelated items. When you expose readers to positive news, they recall more positive details from subsequent news stories or, in this case, paragraphs. Conversely, when exposed to negative content, readers overwhelmingly recall negative details.

In addition, readers approach email differently from other text, focusing on the identity of the sender and then the topic, before skimming the opening paragraph. After that, if they’re interested, readers typically scan the beginning of the second paragraph—potentially missing any upside you mention in the email.

Finally, primacy effects in memory ensure that this first paragraph’s content makes an outsized impression, trumping any positive aspects of your message that follow it. As a result, if you hit your readers with the bad news at the outset, you face two possible outcomes—neither of them desirable:

1. Readers will react badly to the first paragraph and stop reading.
2. If they continue reading, your readers’ recall of the entire email will be negative.

Next, Include a Rationale

Unsurprisingly, researchers have scrambled to determine how to minimize fallout from negative news. When you lead with reasons why a negative event occurred, readers also have three distinct reactions, all surprisingly positive:

1. They comprehend the email more easily.
2. Readers perceive you as both more competent and empathetic.
3. They typically comply with directions you suggest in the same email.

Readers also famously create their own theories about the causes behind events, a development that forms the basis of attribution theory. In fact, readers experience anger and want an apology or some form of compensation if they feel the organization failed to control the situation.

Provide Options

In addition to undermining readers’ trust in an organization, bad news has a second, more damaging impact. Readers immediately perceive new limitations on their choices or actions, an outcome that stems from psychological reactance. Furthermore, clients may even decide to avoid the organization. In the social media world, with the “boomerang effect,” followers even adopt behaviors that oppose directions the organization suggests. Ultimately, because consumers mostly avoid risk, they will likely seek the same service or products from elsewhere.

Place the Most Sensitive Information in a Recall Dead Zone

Some writers might believe that, if they fail to feature bad news front and center, readers will miss it. Wrong. Readers will both spot changes they need to make in their standard behavior and also imagine even worse causes and outcomes if you fail to mention them.

However, you can soften the impact of the bad news if you know where to place it. Due to the power of primacy and recency effects on recall, the middles of paragraphs become dead zones in our recall of details. For example, readers recall information from the center of a paragraph less accurately and for a shorter duration than they do content from the beginnings or endings of paragraphs.

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Moreover, primacy and recency effects also make readers less likely to recall paragraphs from the middle of an email than they do opening and closing paragraphs. As a result, you should place the worst news in the middle of your email’s central paragraph. Even better, place that content in a modifying phrase because readers perceive content in phrases as less important than content in clauses—thus muffling the worst aspects of the news.

Putting PROP Into Practice

Example 1 presents bad news as routine communication.

Source: Yellowlees Douglas

​​​​​​Contrast the letter from a hospital system in Example 1 (above) with the revised email in Example 2 (below). Bizarrely, the hospital’s chief medical officer—or, more likely, someone in its communications department—announced the closing of one of its largest divisions in a letter that left patients uncertain whether the hospital itself was closing or only this particular service. Still more confusing, the letter omits any reasons for the closure and refers patients to their doctor's new practice and address. Weirdly, the doctor’s new address is the same as the old one. Finally, the letter offers patients a link to request the transfer of their records to a new provider.

This letter will not only confuse and frustrate patients but will also almost certainly result in loss of patients. Typically, patients faced waiting times of weeks to months for appointments with specialists. And, following the COVID-19 pandemic, these waiting times increased by one-third. Thus, patients will immediately wonder how long they’ll now need to wait for their next appointment. Furthermore, they will also need to seek insurance approvals for the same clinician—or a new one.

For some specialty services that offer regular screenings—like the division featured in this letter—patients will likely switch providers. At worst, patients might attribute this abrupt closure of a division, announced a week afterward, as a sign that the hospital itself was closing. This explanation could make patients likely to seek specialty services in another hospital system. At a minimum, patients will schedule with their existing doctor at a new practice. Thus, the hospital will face shortfalls in revenue while also likely increasing its spending on outreach and advertising.

In contrast, the opening paragraph of Example 2 stresses the hospital’s commitment to providing best-in-care services to patients. This priming with positive news also provides a rationale for the shift in services. Second, its middle paragraph emphasizes the minimal discontinuities patients will face.

Here, the email addresses and immediately dispels the two losses patients fear most: longer wait times for appointments and issues with insurance. As a result, patients perceive no loss from the negative news and also remain likely to stay with the hospital group for appointments with other specialties.

Example 2

Dear Patient,

To expand our services to patients, we have contracted with [Specialty Division] Consultants. As widely recognized specialists for best-in-care services, [Specialty Division] Consultants can now provide a wider array of patient tests and also minimize wait times for appointments. And, best of all, your clinician, Dr. XXX, will offer her services with [Specialty Division] Consultants.

While you enjoy these enhancements to our existing services, you can still continue to use your existing insurance and the same co-pays for appointments and tests. To minimize disruptions, we have also arranged for the transfer of your records to [Specialty Division] Consultants. But, in keeping with HIPAA laws on patient confidentiality, you must authorize their transfer by using this link: [URL]

[Specialty Division] Consultants will continue to deliver care at our current address, but you’ll find them in their redesigned facilities in Ste 326. To ensure you retain your coming appointment, please call [Specialty Division] Consultants at (000) 123-4567.

We look forward to continuing to serve you in an entirely new way,

XXX, MD

Chief Medical Officer