The GOP Message of Fear

This flyer from the New York GOP shows a brown hand positioned across the mouth of a green-eyed, freckled white woman. I'm not sure what the image has to do with the message that Democrats will destroy "our values" or even that "family values are under attack." But it certainly radiates fear (a woman is being attacked!).

The ad is in line with the vision of terrorists presented in this controversial one-minute national GOP ad. These ads reflect what a 2003 study showed: "50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism [reports] that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and ... common psychological factors [such as] [f]ear and aggression ... intolerance of ambiguity ... [t]error management."

Moreover, if these images of fear stimulate thoughts of death, social science research shows that they may cement feelings of group identification -- making a voter more like to align with the Republican candidate, even if the voter isn't a registered Republican.

From a 2004 social research paper on the "politics of fear" (formatted for reading on the computer screen):

One of our earliest and most widely replicated findings is that reminders of death increase nationalism and other forms of group identification, making people more accepting of those who are similar to themselves and more hostile toward those who are different. For example, in a very early study we found that reminding people of death led them to react more positively toward a person who praised America and more negatively toward a person who criticized America (Greenberg et al., 1990). Similar patterns have been found all over the world...

Many studies have shown that reminders of mortality increase one's tendency to like and support those who share one's political orientation and to dislike and even act violently toward those with different political views... existential fear increases the preference for candidates with a clear vision and a patriotic message...

[R]eminders of one's own mortality or of the 9/11 terrorist attacks led to increased support for President Bush [despite that] in the control conditions, support for Bush's Iraq policy was below the midpoint of the scale -- in other words, the majority opposed the war. However, after being reminded of their own mortality or the events of 9/11, support for Bush's Iraq policy increased above the midpoint, suggesting that the majority supported his policies.

This provides rather clear evidence that existential concerns can have direct effect on political attitudes and preferences and suggests that these forces are influencing attitudes toward our president and his policies today. It seems clear that fear and anxiety can and do play a major role in politics and are there to be exploited to influence political outcomes.

What do you think of ads rooted in fear? Have you seen other examples? We should start an archive, don't you think? Send them to me or post them to your favorite image sharing site, like Flickr or Photobucket.