Whipping up fear or creating a distraction is a common tactic in politics. Providing stark, seemingly life or death choices, us versus them, scapegoating, creating a false bogeyman to distract from real problems, using lies and disinformation … fear and distraction is used because it often works.
The invoked fear is often based on racism and bias. It’s those “other people”–with a different skin color, from another place, who follow a different religion, who speak a different language, who support a different political party–minorities, immigrants, the poor, the old, the young, part of the so-called “deep state” (whatever that means), anyone who is different … they are trying to take away something–something that may never have existed or something that the authoritarian has already taken or would like to take away.
Fear breeds anxiety and stress, and “anxiety increases the attention to negative choice options, the likelihood that ambiguous options will be interpreted negatively, and the tendency to avoid potential negative outcomes, even at the cost of missing potential gains.”
What does this mean? Why does fear and distraction work?
Fear pushes people to see only the negative, to judge negatively even positive or neutral options, and to even act against their own best interests in order to avoid a threatened calamity.
Fear is corrosive; fear and distraction are the friend of dictators and authoritarian/totalitarian governments (and others seeking to take advantage of you).
But, fear is also a state that we help create within ourselves. Just as we can allow fear to build and affect our lives, we can also disrupt it (though it is not easy to do that in times of high anxiety).
One way to beat fear is through knowledge and understanding. Dig through the slogans and disinformation, get to the facts.
The next time you see an apocalyptic political advertisement, hear an incendiary speech, read a post or watch a video that grabs your emotions … before you do anything–stop, take a step back, and think:
- What are they trying to get you to do?
- What is their (politician, political party, organization, influencer, etc.) ultimate motivation?
- Are the words and images shown real, taken out of context, faked by AI?
- Does the implication of the advertisement, speech, post, or video match reality? For example, are they implying rampant crime and violence when the actual statistics and reality show crime has gone down? Are they promising big economic gains for all when history and statistics and current reality show only the rich are benefitting?
- Do you get any tangible, real benefit in your life by doing what they say? Or, are you actually giving up something (freedoms, civil rights, income, your vote, privacy, etc.) and all or most of the benefit goes to them?
Make your own decisions; do not let them/others make decisions for you!
Source:
*Hartley, C. A., & Phelps, E. A. (2012). Anxiety and decision-making. Biological Psychiatry, 72(2), 113-118. [PDF] [Cited by]
“Although the everyday decision-making of clinically anxious individuals is clearly influenced by their excessive fear and worry, the relationship between anxiety and decision-making remains relatively unexplored in neuroeconomic studies. In this review, we attempt to explore the role of anxiety in decision-making with a neuroeconomic approach. We first review the neural systems mediating fear and anxiety, which overlap with a network of brain regions implicated in studies of economic decision-making. We then discuss the potential influence of cognitive biases associated with anxiety upon economic choice, focusing on a set of decision-making biases involving choice in the face of potential aversive outcomes. We propose that the neural circuitry supporting fear learning and regulation may mediate the influence of anxiety upon choice and suggest that techniques for altering fear and anxiety may also change decisions.”
*Raio, C. M., Harp, N. R., Brown, C. C., & Neta, M. (2021). Reappraisal—but not Suppression—Tendencies Determine Negativity Bias After Laboratory and Real-World Stress Exposure. Affective Science, 2(4), 455-467. [PDF] [Cited by]
“Higher reactivity to stress exposure is associated with an increased tendency to appraise ambiguous stimuli as negative. However, it remains unknown whether tendencies to use emotion regulation strategies—such as cognitive reappraisal, which involves altering the meaning or relevance of affective stimuli—can shape individual differences regarding how stress affects perceptions of ambiguity. Here, we examined whether increased reappraisal use is one factor that can determine whether stress exposure induces increased negativity bias. In Study 1, healthy participants (n = 43) rated the valence of emotionally ambiguous (surprised) faces before and after an acute stress or control manipulation and reported reappraisal habits. Increased negativity ratings were milder for stressed individuals that reported more habitual reappraisal use. In Study 2 (n = 97), we extended this investigation to real-world perceived stress before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that reappraisal tendency moderates the relationship between perceived stress and increased negativity bias. Collectively, these findings suggest that the propensity to reappraise determines negativity bias when evaluating ambiguity under stress.”
More sources:
See the video — https://youtu.be/3cE6BYnq6AY
Revisiting: Scapegoats and self-blame
Fear — impacts on decision-making and behavior
Understand the context of information important to you; reduce the fear and anxiety
Clues to deception; who is telling the truth?
You have the power to make your own decisions about issues important to your life–use it!
Questions? Please let me know (engelk@grinnell.edu)
**This is an update of the post Politics and Fear originally published on April 16, 2019**
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