Low-probability high-consequence risks inflate fear and enable extreme policies

Evidence

In coping with terrorism, societies are faced with a dual task. The first is how to reduce the number of terrorist acts. The second is how to combat the fear of terrorism. The likelihood of becoming a victim of a terrorist attack is infinitesimal, but fearfulness is high. Events that are relatively unlikely but that have grave consequences heighten the perception of personal vulnerability and fear. A number of factors can amplify fear arousal. As we noted earlier, people have a low sense of efficacy that they can personally reduce their risk. News broadcasts repeatedly portray the carnage of terrorist strikes worldwide. Debates about national security underscore the vulnerability of the nation’s infrastructure and vital utilities, and a lack of faith in the government’s ability to protect its citizens against terrorist attacks. The Department of Homeland Security’s frequent color-coded alerts of imminent terrorist threats added salience to the threats. Frightened, angry citizens can be easily talked into supporting extreme and misdirected countermeasures, because they do not spend much time agonizing over the morality of lethal modes of self-defense. Later, we will see how politicians have manipulated Americans’ fear to gain support for the war on terrorism. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2115

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to cognitive psychology of probability neglect and to risk-perception scholarship (Kahneman and Tversky). Also echoes the moral-panic literature on disproportionate societal response. — connects to: Industrialized laughter represses fear by capitulating to power instead of escaping it — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 110; Simulation governs deterrence better than actual catastrophe does — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 190; Behavioral risk models make constant tracking structurally necessary for insurers — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 421 (+5 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: how fear of improbable catastrophic events consistently overrides rational risk assessment, and how that predictable psychological pattern is systematically exploited by political actors.
• DEEPTHINKING: The core insight — that fear of terrorism is decoupled from actual victimization probability, and that frightened citizens conspicuously abandon moral deliberation over lethal self-defense — is a dense, paradigm-relevant observation about how risk perception drives moral disengagement.
• APHORISMS: ‘Frightened people will kill without moral agonizing’ is a compact, near-timeless observation about fear’s power to suspend moral reasoning.