Fear as a lever: how fear narrows thinking

Series: How minds are moved · Foundations: how persuasion works · 4 of 7

On 28 September 1918, about 200,000 people stood shoulder to shoulder in Philadelphia to watch a war-bonds parade, in the middle of an influenza epidemic. The official line was calm: don’t frighten people, keep morale up. Within weeks the city had lost thousands. On 22 March 2020, a group of behavioural scientists advising the British government wrote the opposite: “A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened.” They recommended “hard-hitting emotional messaging”. Fear is a lever. Sometimes it is pushed down, sometimes it is pulled up, and in both cases someone decides.

Contents · 9 sections

TL;DR #

• Fear narrows attention. It makes us focus on the threat and on whoever offers protection, and it pushes slower thinking aside.
• Fear appeals work: a 2015 meta-analysis of 127 papers found they change attitudes and behaviour, especially when they also tell people what to do.
• Reminders of death make people cling harder to their group and to strong leaders, according to terror management research.
• The record shows fear being raised and lowered on purpose, by governments of every kind, by campaigns, by companies and by scammers.
• The test is proportion: is the fear I am being given the right size for the evidence?

What fear does to thinking #

Fear is fast. It belongs to the part of the mind Daniel Kahneman calls System 1: automatic, urgent, and very good at keeping animals alive. When it switches on, attention narrows to the threat. Options shrink. Questions that would be normal on a calm day (“how big is this risk, compared with what?”) start to feel irresponsible.

That narrowing is useful when a car comes at you. It is a weakness when the threat is complex and slow, like a disease, an economy or a foreign policy, and when someone else is describing it to you.

What the research says #

Psychologists have studied fear appeals since the 1950s. Two findings matter most.

First, they work. In 2015 Melanie Tannenbaum, Dolores Albarracín and colleagues published a meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin: 127 papers with more than 27,000 participants, from experiments run between 1962 and 2014. Fear appeals changed attitudes, intentions and behaviour, and the authors found few conditions under which they failed. They worked best when the message showed a severe threat, made people feel personally at risk, and included a clear thing they could do.

Second, that last part matters. Kim Witte’s Extended Parallel Process Model (1992) describes two paths. If people feel threatened and also feel able to act, they act. If they feel threatened but helpless, they manage the fear instead of the danger: they deny it, avoid the news, or turn against the messenger. Fear without a way out produces panic or cynicism, not compliance.

A third line of research looks deeper. Terror management theory, developed by Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon and Tom Pyszczynski from the 1980s, starts from the idea that awareness of our own death is a constant background threat, and that we manage it by holding on to our worldview and our group. In experiments, reminding people of death makes them more loyal to their own side and harsher to outsiders. In a 2004 study, Mark Landau and colleagues found that reminders of death, or of the September 11 attacks, increased support for President George W. Bush among American students, and in one study made them less favourable to his opponent John Kerry. The effect is not about any one party: the theory predicts that fear raises the appeal of whoever looks strong and protective.

Cases from several directions and periods #

1918: fear held down #

In the book I am writing, SHTF vs STFU, the first chapter is about the 1918 influenza. In the United States the war came first. The Sedition Act of May 1918 made it a crime to publish anything “disloyal” about the war effort, and the message from officials and many newspapers was not to scare people. The Philadelphia Inquirer told readers not even to talk about influenza. When fear could not be avoided, it was pointed at the enemy: a federal health official suggested German agents put ashore from submarines might have spread the germs. There was never any evidence for that. Philadelphia held its parade on 28 September; five days later it closed schools, churches and theatres, and in October about 4,500 people died there in a single week. Historians still argue how much the parade itself added, but the pattern is clear: fear was managed for morale, not for health.

1964: fear in a campaign advert #

In September 1964 Lyndon Johnson’s campaign ran a television advert in which a little girl counts the petals of a daisy until the count turns into a nuclear countdown and an explosion. It never named his opponent, Barry Goldwater. It aired once as a paid advert and was pulled, then replayed for free on news programmes. It is still taught as the classic political fear ad.

2002: fear and certainty before a war #

The British government’s September 2002 dossier on Iraq said some weapons of mass destruction could be ready “within 45 minutes” of an order. No such weapons were found. The official Iraq Inquiry, chaired by Sir John Chilcot, concluded in 2016 that the judgments about Iraq’s weapons “were presented with a certainty that was not justified”. It did not find that the Prime Minister lied; it found that a frightening claim was presented as firmer than the evidence.

2009: fear raised, then questioned #

The 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic, another chapter of my book, ran the other way. Governments bought vaccines and antivirals in huge quantities. In Ukraine, after the first death three months before a presidential election, the prime minister, who was a candidate, closed schools and banned public gatherings, election rallies included. In June 2010 the health committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a report by the British MP Paul Flynn, which found “overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by WHO”. The WHO rejected that charge. The next time an alarm rang, many people remembered 2009.

2014: fear on state television #

In March 2014, during the crisis over Crimea, the Russian state television presenter Dmitry Kiselyov told viewers that Russia was the only country able to turn the United States into “radioactive ash”. Nuclear threats have since become a regular feature of Russian state talk shows. Its target is mostly the home audience: a country that feels besieged rallies around the person who says he is defending it.

2020: fear raised on purpose, in writing #

The March 2020 paper quoted at the top, Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures, was written by SPI-B, the behavioural-science subgroup of the UK’s scientific advisory group. It said “the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging”. The paper also discussed social disapproval and legal compulsion as levers. The writer Laura Dodsworth argued in her 2021 book A State of Fear that deliberately raising fear in a population was unethical and harmful. In May 2021 The Telegraph quoted Gavin Morgan, a psychologist on the group, saying that “using fear smacks of totalitarianism”. In 2023 four other members, Stephen Reicher, John Drury, Susan Michie and Robert West, wrote in the BMJ that the government’s attempt to frighten people was at odds with its scientific advice. Dodsworth replied that the 22 March paper itself had proposed raising the sense of threat. The document is public, and how to judge it is up to you.

Every day: scammers #

The same lever is used on individuals every day: “your account will be closed in 24 hours”, “a warrant has been issued”, “your grandson is in hospital”. The US Federal Trade Commission’s consumer advice lists the pattern again and again: fear plus urgency plus a request to act now and not tell anyone.

What it feels like from the inside #

Fear feels like clarity. The world becomes simple: the danger, and the way to be safe. Doubt feels reckless, and people who doubt start to look like part of the danger. There is also a strange comfort in obeying: if I do what I am told, it is no longer my fault. And when the fear finally lifts, it often leaves anger, at the threat or at whoever exaggerated it.

What it can and cannot do #

• Fear moves behaviour in the short run, and it can save lives when the threat is real and the advice is good.
• It wears off. People cannot stay frightened for long, and repeated alarms produce fatigue and distrust.
• Fear without a clear action produces avoidance or denial.
• Exaggerated fear has a cost later: the next warning, true or false, is believed less. My chapter on 2009 ends on that point.

How to notice it #

1. What exactly is the risk, in numbers, and compared with what?
2. Who is telling me to be afraid, or not to be, and what do they want me to do next?
3. Is there a clear action, or only alarm?
4. Am I being asked to decide now, before I can check?
5. Do people who ask questions get treated as part of the threat?
6. Would I accept this measure, product or policy if I were calm?

Frequently asked questions #

Do fear appeals actually work? #

Yes, on average. A 2015 meta-analysis of 127 papers found fear appeals change attitudes, intentions and behaviour, especially when they include clear steps people can take.

What is terror management theory? #

It is a theory from social psychology that reminders of our own death push us to defend our worldview and our group more strongly, and to prefer leaders who seem strong.

Is using fear in public health always wrong? #

That is a value question, and people disagree. Some argue that honest fear of a real risk is legitimate; others argue that governments should inform, not frighten. The UK’s March 2020 SPI-B paper is a public example worth reading in full.

How can I tell if fear is being exaggerated? #

Ask for the numbers, compare them with familiar risks, look at who benefits from your fear, and watch whether the action you are asked to take is in proportion to the risk.

The lesson #

Fear is not always manipulation; sometimes the danger is real and the warning is a gift. But fear is also the oldest lever there is, and it has been pulled up and pushed down by every kind of power. When you feel it, ask for the size of the risk and the name of the person telling you about it. Next in the series: the comfort of the crowd, and how agreement can be manufactured.