Fear shapes voters' views

President George W. Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the September 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Talking about death can raise people's need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

"There are people all over who are claiming every time Bush is in trouble he generates fear by declaring an imminent threat," said Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, who worked on the study.

"We are saying this is psychologically useful," said Solomon.

Jeff Greenberg, a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said generating fear was a common tactic.

"A lot of leaders gain their appeal by helping people feel they are heroic, particularly in a fight against evil," Greenberg said in a telephone interview from Hawaii, where he presented the findings to a meeting of the American Psychological Association.

More: www.cnn.com...

If anything I would think that most people would associate Bush to everything that has happened while he has held the presidency. I mean that in a negative way.

People that don't look further then their nose is long are gravely influenced by this.

People that look futher don't and say what they see happening, fear used as a psycho warfare against the US people to push them in to compliance with a wicked goverment.

Now this article goes beyond claims of openminded people, but has science back it up that, indeed, this is a valuable and often used tool.

Lets hope more and more people will open their eyes and stop eating the crap they are being fed.

Fear is determining my political views. I am scared of four more years of GW Bush.
Seriously though, while i do worry about GW Bush and his NAZI crew, i guess i will deal with that if it happens. People have to look at their fears as objectively as they are able and deal with them rationally. Hysteria is counter productive, even when facing death. The passengers of flight 93 understood the stakes and acted. They risked their lives and sadly lost, but they took the actions that were the only chance they had.

It is ok to let fear, worry and anxiety capture your focus, then, once your focus is there, drop them as emotional baggage and deal rationally with the situation.
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