It is basic human nature to view immediate emotions as more important than the earlier ones, according to a new study - so if you are more worried about terrorism than global warming, it is not unnatural.
Led by Leaf Van Boven, a professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the study, in one part, focussed on terrorist threats using materials adapted from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.The researchers presented two scenarios to people in a college laboratory depicting warnings about travelling abroad to two countries.
The participants were then asked to report which country seemed to have greater terrorist threats.
Many of them reported that the country they last read about was more dangerous.
"What our study has shown is that when people learn about risks, even in very rapid succession where the information is presented to them in a very clear and vivid way, they still respond more strongly to what is right in front of them," Van Boven said.
Keeping that in mind, Van Boven said that one of the take-home messages from the study is that when communicating to the public, people must be mindful of how and when they publicize threats, which is a tall task in the around-the-clock news cycle of today.
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He said that human emotions stem from a very old system in the brain and when it comes to reacting to threats, real or exaggerated, it goes against the grain of thousands of years of evolution to just turn off that emotional reaction. It's not something most people can do.
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He added that the in today's 24-hour society, talk radio, the Internet and extensive media coverage of the "threat of the day" only exacerbate the trait of focusing on our immediate emotions.
"One of the things we know about how emotional reactions work is they are not very objective, so people can get outraged or become fearful of what might actually be a relatively minor threat. One worry is some people are aware of these kinds of effects and can use them to manipulate our actions in ways that we may prefer to avoid," he said.
Source-ANI
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