It’s hard not to feel that July brought an unusual dump of bad headlines. Recent weeks have seen the televised deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling at the hands of the US authorities, police being killed in Dallas and Baton Rouge, terror attacks in Istanbul, Baghdad, Dhaka, Nice and Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, and other acts of extreme violence in Germany and Japan.
I watched these incidents unfold against a backdrop of heightened tension around the world, with deep divisions exposed by the UK’s EU referendum, an attempted military coup in Turkey, and the bitterly contested US presidential election. The mass shooting in Orlando’s Pulse night club is still a fresh memory. No surprise that it’s been an especially bad month in an . But are things as bad as they feel to me?
, who studies decision-making at City University in London, says we should be wary of the idea there’s something in the water. “People are groping towards the idea that something ties these events together. This is an attempt at induction: grouping events on the idea that some force or influence may be engineering the shape of the days.” This doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong to think we have hit a rough patch. Even if news stories are random, statistically we should still expect to see runs of weeks or months of more upsetting headlines.
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Fear vs rationality
We are also predisposed to focus on the bad stuff. at the University of Oxford, who researches why people react so differently to what life throws at them, says that to understand how we build our perception of the world, it’s necessary to look at what the brain pays attention to. “Threat information activates the fear system, while positive news activates the reward system, for obvious evolutionary reasons,” she says. The fear system is stronger, and works to shut down the rational part of our brain. What’s more, once we find ourselves in a fearful state, we’re conditioned to seek out more bad news. “Psychologically, our attention is narrowed,” she says.
As a voracious consumer of news, I’m particularly vulnerable. “The sense of immediacy provided by 24-hour rolling news means the brain is saying ‘this is a real threat to me’,” says Fox. This explains why I feel so personally affected even though my chances of being caught up in a shooting or a terrorist attack are vanishingly small. The may also skew our sense of risk. For example, in October 2014, after , a Gallup poll found that , despite only six people in the country being infected and none picking it up on home soil.
Despite our best intentions, we are also affected more by events that happen to those we perceive to be similar to ourselves, which partly explains why some terror attacks garner so much more of our attention than others, says , a social psychology researcher at the London School of Economics. “We may feel closer to people in Nice than people in Aleppo. I’m German and so people in France are in my in-group. People in Syria could be perceived as an out-group, I don’t feel as similar to them”. According to Gleibs, the closer we feel to events – whether in time, location or empathy – the more pressing they seem.
Humdrum with time
My mental state aside, does it really matter that I feel so pessimistic about the world right now? Well, yes. Stress can prompt people to behave in ways that feel safe but are actually riskier. For example, in the year after 9/11, there was an increase in the number of people driving rather than flying around the US. This is thought to have led to .
The likelihood is that I won’t feel like this forever. People misjudge the impact that momentous events like Brexit will have on them, says Ayton, a psychological shortcoming known as poor affective forecasting. “What we think are big, world-changing events become humdrum as we adapt.” When considering the impact of an event, we think of all the changes it will mean, but not what will stay the same nor how much of our happiness stems from unrelated areas that won’t be affected.
We also underestimate our ability to adapt to huge changes. Ayton cites a 1978 study that showed that after two years, instead habituating to their new state. The finding has been replicated many times. And while he admits that like me, he feels gloomy about the recent spate of bad news, Ayton remains sanguine. “Probably I’m going to adapt, and the world will carry on turning.”
This offers me a sliver of comfort. But then I’m just an observer wringing my hands from the safety of my comfy chair.
