The Economics of Fear
This week we delved into the concept of the economics of fear. This article talks about how businesses take advantage of our emotions to propagate their products and services. Hope you like it!
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Halloween - The festival of fear is just around the corner. Isn’t it interesting? We have a festival to celebrate one of the more primitive human emotions. But what makes fear so important? Important enough to have a whole day dedicated towards it.
Fear is a very fundamental reaction to a threat of harm and is usually considered as a negative emotion. But, it is one of the most essential reactions and is responsible for the survival of not just humans but organisms in general. It has evolved over the years of our existence to help our bodies prepare better for immediate threats.
The fear reaction starts from the almond-shaped region in our brain called the amygdala. Generally associated with a threat stimulus, the amygdala triggers the fear response which is aimed to equip our body with the necessary tools to tackle the situation at hand. The fear response hyper alerts our brain, dilates the pupils to improve vision, activates the portion of the brain associated with motor functions, increases blood flow, breathing rate, etc.Â
Fear is usually associated with a trigger. It can be a physical threat for example a sight of a predator or something emotional like the fear of losing someone. Most of our fears can be bundled under the feeling of not being under control. This feeling decides our response to fear. One can say that the feeling of not being in control is directly proportional to the amount of fear we feel or experience.
For example, while watching horror movies, have you noticed that you automatically reach for the remote when something scary comes to the screen? This, reaching for the remote is your way of gaining control at the moment. Now that we have the required information about fear and how it is triggered, I want to talk about how businesses use this feeling to propagate their product or service. One of the first things that come to mind when I think of the economics of fear is insurance. This is not about if insurance is a good investment but about how it is propagated as an entity. Insurance gives you a sense of security or control over something out of our bounds, something as dreadful as a death in the case of life insurance.Â
This idea of propagating fear amongst consumers is not limited to insurance, in fact, this can be found across industries. From the fear of missing out to the fear of loss, brands have incorporated the selling of fear in their sales strategies. Fear being a universal condition is capitalized by these brands to trigger the attention of consumers. Especially the fear of missing out is what triggers us to upgrade the latest smartphone, update to the latest version of the app for the new features, or watch the latest television series.
It is scary how businesses have been able to target a very fundamental emotion and have been able to use it for their benefit. Social Dilemma a documentary on Netflix talks about something very similar to this concept. It mentions how AI models have been able to target our emotions consistently. It also talks about how social media in general has affected us so profoundly that people have started to identify themselves and others through their profiles on said platforms.Â
Is the constant fear-mongering of businesses for personal gain ethical? Let us know!
Until then...
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