One of the things I’ve been paying increasing attention to (perhaps because of the ongoing political debate in the U.S.) is fear marketing. I find it amazing at how pervasive “fear appeals” are and the various ways they are used to sell “stuff,” including politicians and political “talking points.” The basic concept is that we really need to be afraid of X, and, if we want to be safe, we need to stock up on (or vote for) the anti-X.
The world has a lot of risky stuff in it, of course, and we are undoubtedly safer when we pay attention to real risks. That’s why we learn to look both ways before crossing busy streets, why we buy sturdy ladders if we need to wash second-story windows, and why we hire professionals for trimming our big trees or reroofing our homes. We can also find hard, statistical evidence to support increasing our safety in a number of well-known ways, such as using seat belts in cars and helmets when we ride motorcycles, locking our doors when we go on vacation, and replacing the batteries in smoke detectors when we hear the tell-tale beeping that indicates a low-battery.
It is easy to understand why fear-based appeals are used in such cases. Over the years, we have collected a lot of evidence, for example, that bad things can happen in even low-speed auto collisions when people haven’t used their seat belts. It seems to me, however, that even in such cases, it makes sense to ask what evidence supports the need for precaution so that you can understand how much protection you gain in exchange for what cost. Batteries for smoke detectors and the time it takes to fasten a seat belt are very low cost in exchange for knowing that you’ll have early warning in case of fire and a better chance of avoiding serious injury in an auto accident. The small investment may provide a huge return in terms of increased safety.
Given that real risks abound in life, it is easy to see how our automatic response to avoid risk became established. Our ancestors learned, for example, that walking down a jungle path at night might not be a good idea and created stories to install a fear of such activities in children. Even today, parents instill a fear of the “bogeyman,” other goons and goblins, Satan, and Hell to shape children’s behavior. Santa, after all, knows who’s naughty and nice. Real fears, however, may lead to other risky behavior. Fear of terrorists (or snakes) on planes has led to full-body X-ray scanners in airports that, although risky in and of themselves, may not prevent future occurrences of the original problem. In Alabama, fear of “illegal immigrants” has led to sweet potatoes spoiling in the fields for lack of workers to pick them.
What has been called “security theater” in airports and other such efforts to create the appearance of safety shows that most adults continue to have a relatively high-degree of risk aversion. The caveat is that the risk must be perceived as both “real” (“they” used airplanes as weapons before) and relatively immediate (I’m getting on an airplane today) to influence behavior. It’s well-known, for example, that tobacco users have been reluctant to give up something they enjoy in the present to avoid the possibility that they will develop serious illness at some time in the (perhaps) distant future. It has only been as the statistical evidence accumulated showing that tobacco use leads to disease and early death that increasing numbers of tobacco users have been deciding to quit based on the likelihood of long-term consequences.
Not all fears used in fear-based persuasion, however, have much in the way of reality-based evidence. In the U.S., we have never had a documented case of voter fraud, yet many states have implemented costly procedures for controlling who can cast a ballot and where they can cast it. It seems to me that what we really need to fear is fear-based advertising, which seems to be the nature of political advertising. In the U.S. we have already entered the “silly season” of political advertising in what is looking to be a year-long run-up to the 2012 elections, so we will have a good opportunity to observe fear-based advertising at work. The Tea Party and most Republicans will be warning us about the evils of “Big Government” and “the deficit,” while the Democrats will be warning us about the evils of unregulated “corporate greed.” Many—if not most—of the ads will focus on the evils of the “other guy” rather than on the wondrous good of “our guy.” Fearing the “other guy” is more persuasive than loving “our guy.”
Fear-based ads work because of the strong human desire to be safe and secure. Who doesn’t consider it better to be “safe than sorry”? Not all fears, however, are justified. People fear snakes, spiders, bugs of all sorts, and mice. Snakes and other critters will usually do what they can to avoid people, and a relative few are poisonous or otherwise dangerous. While you probably would prefer that such critters lived outside rather than inside your home, none of them should be a cause for panic. If you don’t know which snakes pose a threat and which don’t, it is wise to be cautious. If you need to spend a lot of time around and with snakes, it’s best to be well-educated about snakes to help ensure that you can be “safe” rather than “sorry.” Being familiar with snakes and their behavior is the best protection against being bitten.
While I wouldn’t want to compare politicians to snakes, the best defense against being influenced by fear-based advertising is using the Metamodel questions from NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming). The Metamodel questions are derived from the work of Alfred Krozybski, who developed the theory of general semantics. To discover the relative “truth” of the claims presented in a fear-based ad, check to see what is being omitted, what is being distorted, and the way in which generalizations are being used to lead to false conclusions. The principal questions to ask are the following:
- Who (what, where, or how) specifically (or exactly)?
- How do you know?
- Is that always the case (or never the case)?
For political ads in particular, use the “Metamodel test” on the common talking points. What—specifically—is bad about “big government”? What—exactly—is wrong with high corporate profits? Are rich people really job creators? All rich people? Always? How do you know? Does any statistical evidence support the concept? Does wealth really “trickle down” from the wealthy to the poor? Does unemployment insurance help or hurt the economy? How do you know? What do the data show? Are the associated costs of Medicare more or less than those of private health insurers? Is Social Security (for those in the U.S.) really broke? What evidence supports that conclusion?
For almost all (probably all) talking points, statistical evidence supporting or disproving is available, and—thanks to the Internet—relatively easy to find. With Internet searches, you still need to consider the source. If ads for “Candidate A” say that “Candidate B” bankrupted his (or her) company and put thousands of people out of work, you probably won’t find evidence you can trust at websites supporting either Candidate A or Candidate B. You may have to do a little searching to find evidence you can trust, but having evidence you can trust is the best way to combat fear, either the fear that Candidate B put thousands out of work and might put you out of work, too, or the fear that Candidate A is a liar and that if he or she wins the election, you’ll be in for a lot more lies.
Fear-based advertising is inherently emotional. If you do (or don’t do) X, you will—either literally or metaphorically—be grabbed by Satan and dragged straight to Hell. Pay particular attention to “emotionally laden words”: decay, failure (fail), collapse(ing), deeper, tainted, terrifying, crisis, urgent, destructive, destroy, sick, pathetic, endanger, coercion, hypocrisy, radical, threaten, devour, cheat, steal, criminal rights, and so on. If the ad attempts to persuade you to be afraid of voting for (or voting against) a particular candidate, the chances are that those who sponsored the ad want you to focus on the fear rather than on the reality. The best way to put a stop of that kind of advertising is to use the Metamodel questions and look for reality-based evidence.
Also, remember Bowman’s Law: the value of a product or service (including politicians) is inversely proportional to the amount of TV advertising for it. The purpose of the repetition is to embed the message deep in your brain so that you won’t think about it logically. They want your response to be automatic. It is an extension of the technique B. F. Skinner used to train pigeons to peck a disk in exchange for food. Unless you do a reality check, the message is more deeply embedded with each repetition. With apologies to FDR, perhaps the only thing we have to fear is fear-based advertising….
For more information about the Metamodel, see Chapter 10 in Healing with Language: Your Key to Effective Mind-Body Communication, by Bowman and Basham.
