GlobalShift

Does Fear Activate or Deactivate Morale?

Will negative reporting help galvanize us or increase apathy? For the past few days MSN has been running this story on their homepage. Since I have a Hotmail account and I’m a serial email checker, this story has been forced on me about thirty times in the past 36 hours. It’s not even news to me. I have already heard that if Greenland’s ice shelf melts that it could screw up the earth’s thermostat. NPR reported on that story at least a year ago. However, they did not put it in this panicky, the-world-is-going-to-turn-into-the-disaster-movie-of-your-nightmares kind of way. Instead they told it in typical NPR fashion; gloomy statements backed up with depressing facts.

To be fair, the MSN story does have a lot of interesting facts about the Big Freeze. Biogeochemist William Patterson at the University of Saskatchewan has been cruising around Ireland studying mud samples to detect patterns of global change. According to the article, he is an agent of truth, not politics. He says, “People assume that we’re political, that we’re either pro-global-warming or anti-global-warming, when it’s really neither. Our goal is just to understand climate.” The story gets a little sensational when it suggests that what happened in the 2004 disaster film The Day After Tomorrow, could actually happen well, tomorrow. When I read that, part of me thought, “Wow! What can I do right now to ensure that doesn’t happen tomorrow?” The other part of me thought, “Well, I guess I’ll eat dessert first from now on.”

This year I have found it harder and harder to read the news as most of it isn’t very promising. I have to force myself to do more than skim the headlines. I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. At a party a few weeks ago, I got into a discussion regarding this topic and more than a few people admitted to mainly relying on The Daily Show for their news as that was the only way they could stomach the headlines anymore. It’s difficult not to check out when it seems like all the problems in the world are bigger than any one person. It seems like we are often times at the mercy of politics, history, and many other factors that are out of the realm of our control. Add to the equation, a culture that offers many appealing options for taking a permanent vacation from reality.

So, is fear a motivator or an apathy builder? Let’s check in with the pros. In the March 2006 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research two researchers from Salisbury and Tulane Universities studied the way emotions encouraged people to change unhealthy behaviors. They concluded that inducing fear and guilt were far more persuasive than kinder, gentler messages. Basically, the best way to make people feel accountable was to use a cocktail of fear, guilt and regret sprinkled with a dose of challenge. And that’s where the hope comes in. Challenge implies possibility, possibility ushers in change.

We’d like to know what you think. Where do you look for inspiration and hope? Do depressing news stories motivate you to seek change or do they motivate you to seek the remote?

Sources: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060213091147.htm

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34242705/ns/technology_and_science-science/