The psychology of why 94 deaths from terrorism are scarier than 301,797 deaths from guns

[milestogo]

According to the New America Foundation, jihadists killed 94 people inside the United States between 2005 and 2015. During that same time period, 301,797 people in the US were shot dead, Politifact reports. At first blush, these numbers might seem to indicate that Donald Trump’s temporary ban on immigrants from seven countries—a goal he said was intended to “protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States”—is utterly misguided.

But Trump is right about at least one thing: Americans are more afraid of terrorism than they are of guns, despite the fact that guns are 3,210 times more likely to kill them. Chapman University has conducted a Survey of American Fears for more than three years. It asks 1,500 adults what they fear most. It organizes the fears into categories that include personal fears, conspiracy theories, terrorism, natural disasters, paranormal fears, and more recently, fear of Muslims.

In 2016, Americans’ number-one fear was “corruption of government officials”—the same top fear as in 2015. Terrorist attacks came second. In fact, of the top five fears, two are terror-related. And number five is not fear of guns but fear of government restrictions on guns. Fear of a loved one dying—whether by gun violence or anything else—came next.

Chart

One reason people’s fears don’t line up with actual risks is that our brains are wired by evolution to make fast judgements which are not always backed up by logical reasoning. “Our emotions push us to make snap judgments that once were sensible—but may not be anymore,” Maia Szalavitz, a child psychiatrist, wrote in 2008 in Psychology Today. Also, fear strengthens memory, she wrote, so that one-off catastrophes like plane crashes or terrorist attacks embed in our memories, while we blank the horrible accidents we see daily on the highway. “As a result, we overestimate the odds of dreadful but infrequent events and underestimate how risky ordinary events are,” Szalavitz explained.

https://qz.com/898207/the-psychology-of-why-americans-are-more-scared-of-terrorism-than-guns-though-guns-are-3210-times-likelier-to-kill-them/

This goes a long way in explaining irrational voting habits.

[JayhawkSD]

1. The biggest reason that our fears don't line up with facts.

"people’s fears don’t line up with actual risks is that our brains are wired by evolution..."

Spoken by a child psychiatrist and utter nonsense. Maybe true of children, but voters are adults. There is a reason we don't let six-year-olds vote.

The real reason is media propaganda and fear mongering politicians. Every day in the news we are browbeaten with advisories of the danger of terrorists being let loose among us and are lectured by politicians of the need to "keep us safe" from all sorts of deadly enemies, most of whom do not actually exist. Only rarely are guns presented as a threat, and even then the media spends most of its time giving us lengthy histories and psychological details of the gunman and harping on the danger of other terrorists like him.

The real reason for irrational voting habits is the laziness of the average voter who bases the vote on a single issue. I'm pro-choice, so I vote for the candidate who vows to protect the right to have an abortion, never mind that he also vows to allow government spying, intends to vote in favor of every war that comes along... I live on Social Security, so I don't care what a candidate's position is on anything else, I will vote for him if he vows to protect my Social Security. I'll vote for the incumbent because a newcomer to Congress won't have as much clout and will not be able to bring home as much pork to my location.

Blaming it on evolution makes it not our fault, as does blaming it on the wealthy and the bribery of politicians. But we vote them into office and we reelect them, and it isn't because of how evolution wired our brains, it's because we are not paying attention.

[flamin lib]

3. What you said . . . nt

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

2. My take

Of the 80,000,000 - 100,000,000 gun owners, there were 8,124 firearm murders. Even if a different person committed every murder, about 1 person out every 9,850 gun owners kills.

On the other hand, I think the majority of terrorists in this country all want to kill.


What you say is true. On average 100 people die per day in motor vehicle accidents. Most of those never make the news. If an airplane crashes and 10 die with others injured, it's a lead story for most of the news media.