A nation exhausted: The neuroscience of why Americans are tuning out politics
Raw StoryBy Arash Javanbakht, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University “I am definitely not following the news anymore,” one patient told me when I asked about her political news consumption in the weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The politics of fear In my 2023 book, “AFRAID: Understanding the Purpose of Fear, and Harnessing the Power of Anxiety,” I discuss how American politicians and major news media have found an ally in fear: a very strong emotion that can be used to grab our attention, keeping us in the tribal dividing lines and making us follow, click, tap, watch and donate. That is because of another survival mechanism – what’s called “learned helplessness.” In 1967, American psychologist Martin Seligman exposed two groups of dogs to painful shocks. The COVID-19 pandemic, more than a decade of intense political stress, polarizing social media and wars across the world, as well as public disillusionment with U.S. politics and media, have led, I believe, to many people experiencing burnout and learned helplessness.
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