Today is January 14 and Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “Do you have the courage required to manage fear?
Researchers continue to investigate the complexity of fear and its impact on humans in a variety of settings.
One such researcher was Daniel Gardner who published The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t – and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger.
Gardner examined cancer, how the media sells fear, the economy, and a host of other topics.
Gardner opens up his book by highlighting research conducted on the travel patterns of Americans following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The official death toll for the September 11 attacks stands at 2,996, including the 19 hijackers, but research suggests that there is a further, indirect toll as a result of behavioral changes induced by fear. In the months after the 2001 terror attacks, passenger miles on the main U.S. airlines fell between 12% and 20%, while road use increased.
The change is widely believed to have been caused by concerned passengers opting to drive rather than fly.
Traveling long distances by car is more dangerous than traveling the same distance by plane. Measuring the exact effect is complex because there is no way of knowing for sure what the trends in road travel would have been had 9/11 not happened.
Gardner included the work of Professor Gerd Gigerenzer, a German academic specializing in risk, in his publication. Gigerenzer estimated that an extra 1,595 Americans died in car accidents in the year after the attacks—indirect victims of the tragedy.
He used trends in road and air use to suggest that, for a period of about 12 months, there was a temporary increase in road use before citizens again became more willing to fly at similar rates to before the attacks.
Gigerenzer ascribed the extra deaths to people’s poor understanding of danger. “People jump from the frying pan into the fire." In other words, people scared themselves to death.
In a rush of panic, anxiety, and stress, people stop taking the safer mode of transportation, airlines, and took the more dangerous method of driving.
Mark Twain noted one of the most important stepping stones to success in his statement on fear: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.” Rare is the successful person who has a life free of fear.
As you go about your day, consider asking yourself do you have the courage required to manage fear?