Promotional Distortions

In a previous article, we saw how reality functions as if it has a negative bias. Here's another one. I didn’t know whether to put this one in “media's negative bias” or “reality's negative bias.” It’s a little of both. We'll call it “promotional distortions.” If you were trying to sell something or raise money for a cause, what would be an effective way to get people to hand over their money? One tried-and-true method is to scare people (about something like the safety of their tap water or pesticides in their fresh fruit).

Awhile back (and for about six months) our mailbox was flooded with requests for donations by lobbying groups, all of them saying the Roe v. Wade decision is threatened by the new judge (the decision legalized abortion in 1973 in the U.S.).

The lobbying groups were all saying the new judge was against abortion, so there was a “razor-thin” 5-4 majority, and if anything happened, abortion could be illegalized. If you don’t want this to happen, they all said breathlessly, then send us some money to help us fight it. And send it now!

But when I looked into it a little bit, I found that the U.S. Supreme Court had a 6-3 majority in favor of legalized abortion. Hardly "razor-thin." One of those judges in favor of abortion did, in fact, vote against abortion, but only once and it was a special case (a “partial-birth” procedure using “a particularly grotesque abortion method”). Justice Anthony Kennedy made it very clear at the time why he voted against this very specific case. He even made a pointed statement at the time that he was not in favor of legalizing abortion and that his case was a special situation.

In other words, there was no “crisis” in the Supreme Court. The lobbying groups, who rely on donations to stay in business, bent the truth to get donations. And bent the truth in a negative direction, making things seem worse than they actually are. The use of this kind of scare tactic is yet one more way pessimism worms its way into the minds of so many people.

The people responsible for these promotional campaigns are probably not evil. But in the competition for donation funds, who will get more money — those who make us believe a crisis needs our urgent help? Or those who don’t?

Since I was young I always assumed people working on the "noble" causes behaved honorably (and people who are merely trying to make a profit do not). But by a slow accumulation of contrary examples, I finally had to admit that no matter what their mission, everybody has to pay their bills to stay afloat, and if fudging the truth a little helps a good cause, some will do it.

For example, ecology is a noble cause. An ecologist at a university who has to obtain grants to do his research has an incentive to make alarming predictions of future doom. This might make his work seem more urgent than other people asking for grant money, so he might win the grant by using this tactic. He might have to bend the truth, but maybe the end justifies the means. After all, at the moment, he has nothing to lose. Nobody can prove he’s wrong until time has passed. By then, he will already have spent his grant money.

In 1970, Life magazine published an article saying, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support...the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution...by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” This was a mainstream magazine.

They had plenty of experts to back up those alarming predictions.

People who have an incentive to alter our points of view — even people working for noble causes — will sometimes use negative, distorted, and even fabricated information. The negative angle sells, it gets on the front page, and it helps recruit followers. That's all fine and dandy for the writers and publishers, but those of us who see those headlines are influenced to see the world more negatively than it really is.

It is not just lobbyists and professors and nonprofit organizations who find it necessary to use negative motivation. It is much bigger than that. Because of our own brain's negative bias, this approach will work better than any alternatives as long as people don't know about it.

But it ceases to work once you're aware of it. If you'd like to help make the world a more positive place, share this information with your friends and family. We don't need to outlaw promotional distortions. A widespread understanding of how it works will make it less profitable to promote pessimism.

Read more about how you can protect yourself from getting infected by pessimism.

Also check this out: A Handy Tool For Defeating Pessimism Worldwide.