'Immediacy bias' means large-scale problems take back burner
A University of Colorado professor who studies emotions found that it's human nature to be more concerned about headline-grabbing dangers, such as an impending terrorist attack, than large-scale, prolonged problems like global warming.
CU psychology professor Leaf Van Boven calls it an "immediacy bias." His newly released study shows people tend to view their immediate emotions as more intense and important than their previous emotions.
Van Boven said the research could be of interest to policymakers and the media, given today's 24-hour news cycle that focuses on the threat of the day and can exacerbate the human trait of focusing on immediate emotions.
"When people are constantly bombarded by new threats or things to be fearful of, they can forget about the genuinely big problems, like global warming, which really need to be dealt with on a large scale with public support," Van Boven said.
For the experiment, Van Boven and his research colleagues provided travel advisories from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that warned of terrorist activity in Bali and Kenya. The team asked the undergraduate research participants to imagine they were traveling to those countries, review the advisories and then report which country seemed to harbor the greatest threat.
Many reported that the country they last read about was more dangerous, despite the travel warnings conveying comparable threat levels, Van Boven said.
"Whatever the threat of the season is can crowd out concern about other threats even if those other threats are actually more dangerous," Van Boven said. "Because we are so emotionally influenced when it comes to assessing and reacting to threats, we may ignore very dangerous threats that happen not to be very emotionally arousing."
For example, Van Boven said, people tend to perceive a bomb in a backpack as a greater risk than climate change.
"Really slow-moving, large-scale risks are habitually under-appreciated because they don't strike alarm," he said.
The National Science Foundation funded the study with a $250,000 grant. It was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Michaela Huber, a CU doctoral student of psychology and neuroscience, is a co-author. Huber, in a separate study, is examining how emotions influence charitable giving.
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is used extensively in the corporate world on their employees. The employees are kept flooded with immediate crises - often that are insignificant in their impact, but that take IMMEDIATE and urgent attention because the bosses say you have to deal with it or else.
Thus energy and attention is diverted from attacking really serious issues - such as chronic abusive, immoral, or illegal behavior.
It works like a charm. And the employees are so burned out at the end of each day, they have no energy to work through their union or unite together to address the real problems.