Wednesday, April 15, 2020

You can't restart the economy when people are still scared.


Trump seems to think that he can arbitrarily announce the economy is open and everyone will start going out again.  Good luck with that.

Fear is a powerful motivator.  Bad emotions have more impact than good ones.  Bad information is processed more thoroughly than good.  Bad impressions and stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to change.  (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, and Vohs, 2001)

We are hard-wired to remember bad events more than good ones, reliving them over and over again in our minds in an effort to make sure we don't repeat our mistakes. (Kensinger, 2007)

So how can a random statement from a habitual liar make any difference at all?  The answer is that it can't.

The only way to restart the economy is to make people feel safe again.  And that's only going to happen when those death curves decline significantly.  But as soon as people start to go out again they will begin to rise.  So lifting "stay home" now could actually make the economy worse in the long run.

You can't tell people how to feel and right now they afraid.


Baumeister, R., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, F., Vohs, K. (2001)  Bad Is Stronger Than Good.  Review of General Psychology.  Retrieved May 29, 2016, from http://dev.rickhanson.net/wp-content/files/papers/BadStrongerThanGood.pdf

Kensinger, E. (2007) Negative Emotion Enhances Memory Accuracy.  Association for Psychological Science.  Retrieved May 30, 2016, from https://www2.bc.edu/elizabeth-kensinger/Kensinger_CD07.pdf

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