Fear is a very important psychological factor that plays into mostly everybody’s lives. It is all around us. Fear is very evidently present in the modern media; they use it to scare people into thinking things that they would normally not give much thought to. The use of fear to persuade people is becoming more and more common now that we are getting close to our next presidential election. There are few campaign ads that I have seen that did not use fear to try to sway the targeted constituents into siding with whomever the ad is for.
I think that the reason why fear is such an effective tool against people’s minds is that above all else; above happiness, sadness, or contentedness, every human being has the sense of self preservation. Fear is at the center of the feeling to keep oneself safe from danger; the fear of doing something that is going to negatively affect one’s life in some way shape or form. When someone is convinced that something is going to harm them, they try their very best to avoid it.
Fear can also be a good way at putting one’s problems into perspective. For example, when someone has a near- death experience, they, for the most part, change something about their lives because they now fear that they might not live much longer. Fear, instance, can be used to motivate people to accomplish the things that they want to do because the fact that they do not want to die without fulfilling their dreams.
Fear can also be very persuasive. This is evident in the different kinds of torture that engage in making the fear more excruciating pain or death. When someone is afraid for their life, they will most likely do anything that could help them escape from the situation.
Fear is often used to misconstrue the truth in order to persuade people, like in the example of political campaign ads that I had mentioned earlier.
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