The Fear Factor The Fascination with Scary News (Even after Halloween)

The Fear Factor The Fascination with Scary nachrichtensendung (Even after Halloween) Which mainstream news headlines grab yur attention first Scary, alarmist news, or inspiring/neutral stories? What about recruitment related headlines? In mass-media news reporting, frightening and depressing news seems to grab ur attentionand mora of it, along with more space, than uplifting news. Is that because of some human instinct, the Zeitgeist of our age of anxiety, a ruling-elite and mass-media agenda or because news media are convinced we feel bad news is more important or fascinating than good news?Imagine two headlines Recruiters Live Longer than Everybody Else and Recruiters Are Dying Younger than Everybody Else. Or, how about Recruiters Average Salaries to Soar vs. Recruiters Average Salaries to Plummet? If you could read only one in each pair, without knowing how well-supported the research is, which one would you chose to read?Im betting it would be the gloom-and-doom headlines.The Gloomberg News Forget what I think. Mainstream media seem to think youll choose the story with the scarier, bad news headline. For example, on October 29, 2012, the Fox News Latest News stories list comprised 16 reports, 12 of which being about bad and/or scary things, e.g., cannibal cop, murderous nanny, abusive scoutmaster, fighting in Syria and death of an author.In addition to lopsidedly reporting bad and scary things, Fox and many other mainstream news media consistently focus on roguesscary or bad individuals, as opposed to ominous economic trends, excessive manipulative corporate influence, urban decay, vanishing water, public health problems, rogue organizations (both private and governmental, e.g., shadowy military-contractor agencies), bad legislation, scary ideologies, military-industrial-financial collusion, dangerous technologies, environmentally polluting practices, ominous demographic trends, global warming and/or cooling, risky scientific research (e.g., GMO), to name but a few.Now why is that, if not to make it seem that most of the problems of the world are caused by scary rogue individuals rather than by more powerful, even scarier forces, e.g., sinister groups, organizations, cartels or rampaging, vengeful Mother Nature?November 1st welches even more of the same14 out of 16 stories were obviously negative news, with only one being clearly positivea story about a poker-winning millionaire. An ostensibly uplifting story about an abandoned baby being found alive actually has horrible negative implications about some evil rogue individuals (or couples) parenting. Likewise, a karate experts pounding of an intruder, however inspiring, calls attention to the rogue intruder and the menace out-of-control individuals (rather than out-of-control spending).Heres the entire list of the November 1st Fox Latest News of the day. leidice that virtually all of them deal with scary individual rogue humans or animals (as though these are the main forces shaping our times and large-scale real problems)Sandusky sent to prison housing death row inmatesSouth Dakota executes man for raping, killing girlBachmann in tough re-election bid, as challenger attacks stardom2 panthers escape enclosure fence in FloridaCops Man burglarized home with 3-year-old son in carMich. police search for possible sniper in car shootingsOklahoma man on motorcycle collides with bullCalifornia karate student pummels intruderFinal Brown-Warren debate canceled, as poll shows close race for Massachusetts Senate seatMaryland man, 24, wins World Series of Poker, $8.53MNewborn found alive after being abandoned in handbagCalifornia restaurants sign offers cockroach warningOhio teen found guilty of murder in Craigslist schemeIowa man accused of biting stepchild in punishmentMom allegedly abandons kids on side of interstateGroup calls attention to racially insensitive costumes(No inspiring st ories here, like that of Taylor Wilson, the teen prodigy who constructed the worlds first nuclear fusion reactor when he was 14 and, at 17, created a nuclear radiation device that could save us all from dirty bombs hidden in dockside containers.)Then, of course, there is the enormously popular Drudge Report (drudgereport.com), where in just one subsection of its November 3rd news links, all of the stories were scary, bad-news reportsOCTOBER UNEMPLOYMENT UP 7.9%RATE HIGHER THAN WHEN OBAMA TOOK OFFICEPresident Faces Voters With Highest Unemployment Of Any Incumbent Since FDRROMNEY Sad reminder economy at virtual standstillIncomes Continue to DeclineLong-Term Rate Rises to 40.6%Blacks to 14.3%Food Stamp Growth 75X Greater than Job CreationIn its headline reporting about hurricane Sandys aftermath, again, all of the storiesall 15 of themwere gloom-and-doom, anger or fear based, piled on like a mountain of Gloomberg NewsDrivers Waiting 6 Hours For Gas in NYCTempers Rise in Wake of StormF inding bodies left and rightThey forgot about usCHUCK SCHUMER CONFRONTED We Are Gonna DieCRAIGSLIST $15 a gallonUtility workers pelted with eggsMiseryResidents Furious RED CROSS Offering Cookies Hot Chocolate, Not Blankets Or ClothesJet Fuel Supply Fast Becoming Concern At AirportsStaten Islanders Plead for Help We Need FoodPlease dont leave usVIDEO Stranded New Yorkers Defecating in Apartment BuildingsDIRENJ town enacts 70s style gas rationingAlthough not as extreme as this on a percentage basis, a sample of recruiting news returns from Googling recruiter and recruiting + LinkedIn, promptly turned up bad news and scary headlines like theseHow the Recruitment Process Became Inhumane (News.com.au, 10/25/2012)How Not to Get a Job (The Telegraph, 10/31/2012)How to Scare a Recruiter (WSJ, 10/30/2012)IT pros should beware the counter-offer recruiter (IT World Canada, 10/25/2012)The New Science of Resumes and Why Yours Sinks to the Bottom (Fastcompany.com, 10/19/2012)How to Destroy Your Video Strategy in One Step (Business Insider, 10/16/2012)Yet, perhaps because the entire recruiting industry runs on hope, the bulk of recruiting news is either matter-of-fact neutral or positive. Of the 16 news articles posted at Recruiter.co.uk, not one was negative. Here at Recruiter.com, 4 out of 20 headlines reviewed had some negative tonebut mostly related to employee layoffs and unfavorable shifts in business trends (which reflect simple facts of life, such as shifts happen). Not one was a real horror story (although one Recruiter.com feature article, 4 Hiring Lessons From Horror Movies by Sajjad Masud, calls attention to analogies between Halloweenish horror movies and recruiting).Why So Much Gloomberg News?Apart from such statistical evidence, armchair psychology and general observation suggests that nothing grabs our attention as quickly as scary, bad and alarmist news. Pressed to explain both our predilection to pay attention to such dark news and the mass medias frequent ly lopsided focus on it, I would offer the following hypothesesHardwired Psychological Priority of Danger-Oriented Vigilance over Opportunity-Oriented Vigilance Danger-oriented vigilance is probably evolutionarily more fundamental and hardwired into our brains than opportunity-oriented vigilance, just as, given a choice between avoiding pain and securing an equivalent level of pleasure, we will probably choose avoiding the pain, assuming identical levels of intensity, cost and benefit (respectively), frequency, duration and what Jeremy Bentham, the 19th-century British utilitarian philosopher, called fecunditythe amount of subsequent pleasure or pain that the original pain or pleasure generates, e.g., the pain of a hangover that follows a Jack Daniels binge or the pleasure of university graduation generated by the pleasures of four years of intense study. (I did say imagine.)Common sense suggests this is so and as it should be. Thats because failure to be vigilant for and about a da nger will, in general, be more catastrophic for any living thing than failure to pay attention to an opportunity.Overlooked dangers, virtually by definition, tend to have immediate bad consequences, whereas missed opportunities offer a grace period before the costs of the lost opportunities. A seal failing to notice the polar bear closing in as it closes in on a fish may pay for seizing that opportunitywith its life.To get a feel for this difference in human terms, imagine a Neanderthal who chooses to seize the opportunity to mate beneath towering ferns rather than to keep an eye on and two feet ready to flee Soto the Ice Age saber-toothed tiger he hears hidden in other ferns.(Actually, despite any movie depicting such, the Neanderthals of Europe and North American saber-toothed tigers never encountered each other, since they were on different continents.)In this instance, the choice may come down to attending to the danger of immediate annihilation in the jaws of the saber-tooth, o r the delayed danger of dying without progeny later, as a result of having missed the Neanderthal maid in the forest mist moment. In its simplest terms, this is an instance of choosing the risk of eventual genetic annihilation in preference to immediate as well as genetic death.2. The Math of Fear Mathematics also suggests the same thing In my article The Simple Math Underlying Why We Hate to Lose, I use very basic arithmetic to demonstrate that, in general, the prospect of not losing any amount of money means more to us than the prospect of gaining the same amount. Translated into a bad-news and fear news model, this means that we are more likely to read articles that alert us to feared losses than imminent gains, when those losses and gains are the same size.3. Mass-media circus-and-dread agitation Roman emperors lulled and appeased the masses through a bread-and-circus strategy of gladiatorial distraction, entertainment and conditioning to accept violence and displays of imperial power, combined with their equivalent of food stamps.The stadiums and their design have changed considerably since then, but the ultimate name of the game and the underlying designs remain eerily similar Keep the masses focused on dangerous Coliseum heroes and villainsrogues of the State, so to speak.Hollywood themes of individual rogues, psycho loners and outlaw heroes reinforces the message of danger with the trope of the dangerous individual and stranger-danger (which is a very effective deterrent to mass collaborative demonstrations and crusades with other strangers).This strategy taps into whatever instinctive preoccupation with dread that is innate in us. It also takes advantage of the possibility that the humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow was right at the base of our pyramid of needs is the need to feel safe (comparable to whatever need we have to feel safer than the other guy, including the less luckyand to feel good about that).On this hypothesis, our susceptibility to bad, scary, alarmist news doesnt have to be and isnt completely innate Its bred into us by mass-media programming as part of our brainwashing to keep us compliant and apart.Recasting, in terms of fear, Voltaires aphorism about God, If it did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. So, one way or another, we will always live and read in fear and gloom.Do you find such thoughts frightening and gloomy? Good.You are supposed to.