Why we suffer from fear-mongering, who's to blame, and what to do about it

7-15-2008 National:

Who profits from promoting fear? Does paranoia make us blind to real dangers? How can we combat fear-mongering? These are some of the questions author Dan Gardner answers in an interview with DigitalJournal.com about his recent book Risk.

Digital Journal — Do any of these headlines sound familiar?

“Parents fear MySpace is playground for pedophiles.”

“What is the most dangerous part of flying?”

“Nonstick cookware may cause cancer.”

If you answered “yes” then you win the grand prize of fear-mongering, the trend du jour in politics and media. Author Dan Gardner studied how our brains are hard-wired to accept paranoid proclamations as real dangers.

In his book Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear (McClelland & Stewart), Gardner, a reporter for the Ottawa Citizen, explains how irrational fear is dominating sectors of society that profit from making mountains out of molehills. It’s all well and good to illustrate the true risks afflicting global cultures, Gardner says, but we live in the safest and healthiest period in human history. So why are we bombarded with messages about the risk of flying, terrorist attacks, cancer-causing cookware and Internet pedophiles?

In an interview with DigitalJournal.com, Gardner discusses how our Stone Age ancestors actually understood the real dangers existing in their lives. So what changed? This is your guide to how politicians and journalists put the fright into people all over the world.

DigitalJournal.com: What inspired you to write Risk?

Dan Gardner: It came out of my experience as a journalist. I was digging into subjects like cancer, terrorism, and crime. Time after time I found the threat wasn’t as big as it was being portrayed. I became increasingly aware of the disconnect behind this fear-mongering and the improvement of our living standards. We have become fearful of things that are not as bad as we think they are, and we aren’t aware of the benefits of life today. Why is this?

DigitalJournal.com: Who is responsible for making us so fearful?

Gardner: First there’s the media, who engage in sensationalism to tell catastrophic stories. Sadly, all the commonplace criticisms of media are true. Second, marketers love fear. There’s a long list of organizations that profit by promoting fear. If a corporation makes you fear something, they’ve succeeded. Look at how security and home-alarm systems are a big industry: if you see their ads, there’s no question they promote the fear of crime. If you’re afraid of being a victim, the solution is to buy a home alarm.

The third most important factor is psychology. I argue about the mismatch between our brain and the information age we live in. We have a conscious mind, the mind listening to this conversation, the mind that can think logically. But we also have an unconscious mind that does most of the brain’s heavy lifting. It delivers snap judgment and offers decisions as hunches. They are feelings that are somehow true but you can’t explain why. So why does the unconscious mind deliver instant results whereas the conscious mind is slow and lumbering? Because we don’t always survey information logically. We take snippets of info and apply a rule of thumb.

DigitalJournal.com: Like in what situations?

Gardner: What about thinking of examples? If you can think of an example easily, it must be common and may happen in future. If you struggle to find an uncommon example, it will unlikely happen in the future. It made sense in the Stone Age. The only info available was personal experience or anecdotes from other guys. If you can quickly think of an example of someone grabbed by crocodile, you should be worried about croc attacks. In the information age, you turn on the TV and see the evening news, say a story about a German boy lured by a pedophile, kidnapped and then murdered. Now parents take their kid to a park, and they’re worried about strangers abducting children. The unconscious mind processes the info and says, “How hard is it to think of a pedophile example?” It’s really easy because the parents just saw a case last night on the evening news. Therefore it is common, right? And parents have an uneasy feeling because now they need to watch their kids. Abductions by strangers are fantastically rare but parents are convinced it’s a serious threat.

DigitalJournal.com: Won’t some parents say that there’s no harm in being protective?

Gardner: When you dig deep, there’s a huge cost to being overly cautious. It’s significant when parents won’t allow kids to play unsupervised. They keep children indoors where they don’t get enough exercise and then we see a rise in obesity. That’s a serious threat to their well-being.

Part of the process of maturation is increasingly taking on risk. Children should make decisions for themselves. Street-proofing kids can be important, but what does it do to a four-year-old’s psyche when he’s being told every stranger is a monster?

DigitalJournal.com: It seems that politicians love putting the fear in us in order to win more votes come election time.

Gardner: Politicians can work on the fear of pedophiles, for instance, and say “I’m a responsible leader, and I will crack down on strangers lurking in bushes!” The media report the politician’s words, the paranoia is instilled in the public and around it goes in this never-ending cycle, resulting in outsized fears totally out of proportion.

DigitalJournal.com: How can science reporting give the public the wrong impression?

Gardner: When scientific studies flip-flop, it tends to damage the credibility of science and not the media reporting on those studies. But that’s unfortunate because changing results says nothing about science. It’s supposed to work like this: in science, there is a slow accumulation of evidence. Researchers look at any question that contradicts their bits of evidence. Scientists assess the total body of evidence and wonder which direction it points. The problem is the media iare overwhelmingly scientifically illiterate. Many reporters say a study proves X and it’s now settled scientific fact. Then another study proves negative X and the public says “Science is crazy.” But reporters should understand the scientific process. They should communicate that one study proving an essential point is only one study. In the same story, reporters should discuss all evidence to date. Is this conclusion in line with other studies? Is it contradictory?

DigitalJournal.com: So what can we do to resist the tug of fear-mongering in politics, science and media?

Gardner: I don’t think the solution is moving up to a cabin in the woods and avoiding television. In human decision-making, the conscious mind can always overturn decisions from the unconscious mind. People don’t usually do that, instead thinking with their gut. But we have to have a healthy amount of skepticism and ask ourselves, “If I believe something to be true, why do I believe it?” ..News Source.. by Digital Journal