Fear and Love on the Campaign Trail

Many words come to mind when thinking about what the antithesis to love could be. Is it hate? Is it indifference? Or is it fear? 

If I had to guess, many people would view it as hate. I did too. However, hate stems from fear, fear of novelty, uncertainty, insecurity. I may fear someone, therefore I may not love them, and vice versa. But learning from previous articles, and life, these emotions are not entirely binary.

Think, for example, of a person who feels deep love, affection and attachment toward a partner who abuses them physically, sexually, and/or verbally. People start wondering, “Why don’t they just leave the relationship?” In this case, fear and love are strongly intertwined in ways that can be perceived as irrational, harmful and toxic. Couples may be living together, sharing a home, bearing children together, so there is a strong physical, financial, biological and psychological interconnectedness that is very hard to entangle. 

In contrast, history shows us that when there’s less physical or visual connection between races, entities, or individuals, there’s a lower chance of fear and love to intertwine or even meet. You’ve heard the saying “divide and conquer” – many societies experienced it unfortunately. The wider the gap between fear and love, the more they seem like two ends of a non-ending spectrum. Yet, to my surprise, some groups of people have the ability to challenge this thought, and choose to build knowledge, connection, affection towards a stranger, no matter the conditions, differences and consequences. This kind of love is seen in a global phenomenon today, expressed on the streets, through protests, graffiti, flags, handwritten signs, social media posts, boycotts, donations, and volunteering.

The dichotomy of feeling fear or love toward a stranger has always been fascinating to me. People can ignore and shelter themselves from strangers, while others dare to be curious, come closer, and embrace them with compassion, warmth and understanding.

The stranger, which in our current world often refers to the immigrant, the asylum seeker, the refugee, is a never-ending debate that clearly is a cornerstone of political stance in Western and Western-inspired societies. They are considered as the boogeyman for some – diversity and renewal (and dare I say ‘exoticism’?) for others.

How often have immigrants been portrayed as threats and blamed for everything wrong happening in Western countries, in Western media, especially when voting season is upon us; where some political parties kick off their campaigns with distorted depictions of immigrants and what to do about them: “We’re going to build a big, beautiful wall! We’re closing our borders! Let’s make coming to the EU and the US more difficult for people from ‘developing’ countries!”

Growing up in a war-torn country, the only media and news coverage that remain vivid in my memory are those steeped in fear. Fear is everywhere, like hidden mines scattered around, unseen by the eye, ready to explode at any moment. For as long as I can remember, fear has been used to attract political votes and boost viewership, and unfortunately, not-so-recent studies show its presence in the media today is unprecedented ¹. Fear-based strategies are increasingly being used in campaigns, to the point that both political parties and news media are working together to shape electoral outcomes, by curating ‘realities’ to suit their own agendas.

Well, this article explores the use of fear in election campaigns, drawing on the psychology behind voters’ political stances, how fear perpetuates polarization, and how love could be an understated approach to reducing both fear and societal division.

Between fear and love

Everyone experiences both fear and love. Some forms of fear and love are innate, hardwired into us by evolution and survival instincts, while others are learned from our experiences since birth.² Our acquired fears and loves are learned from our parents, our friends, our schools, our community, our local media, etc. They are also learned from the world outside our societal bubble (other beliefs, values, races, and cultures). We all share these fundamentals and the desire to feel safe, and to see our loved ones safe as well. But then we must ask: who are our loved ones in this context? Are they only our close family and friends, or do they also include our neighbours and even strangers we feel compassion for?

A study titled “Six types of love differentially recruit reward and social cognition brain areas” was conducted to examine how the strength of love compares across six types of love we experience and share in our lifetime. The study investigated the brain regions involved in love for a romantic partner, one’s children, friends, strangers, pets, and nature.³ The results show that interpersonal bonds such as parental, romantic, and friend love elicited strong activation in reward and motivation circuits, as well as in brain regions that support emotional regulation and attachment.³ Romantic and parental love show the highest and most similar levels of activation, whereas friendship shows high activation but not as high as romantic or parental love. Love for strangers has the least activation in reward areas, with lower emotional intensity and arousal, and overlaps with the neural network for compassion and altruism.³

Here again we ask: If we don’t love someone, are we simply indifferent to who they are and what they experience daily, until a certain feeling of threat – caused by a stimulus – arises and turns that indifference into fear? And does fear change our perception of them into obstacles or sub-humans?

Psychologically and biologically, love is seen as the antidote of fear.⁴ From an evolutionary point of view, the biology of love has the capacity to protect against and overcome chronic fear and disease.⁴ Moreover, love and psychological safety are critical not only to survival but also to the capacity for a peaceful world.⁴ So, in the context of compassion or love for strangers, can we then hypothesise that if this love is absent, fear becomes the dominant emotion?

You're right – I'm left

Looking at the literal physical distance between fear and love, can we say that the farther the distance, the more likely fear becomes ‘fear of’, and the shorter the distance, the more likely fear becomes ‘fear for’? This is of course a generalization, but it gives us a simplified picture or mental diagram to remind us to maybe shorten this distance, by talking, listening and understanding the stranger – maybe the more we relate to them, the less we fear them and the more we have compassion towards them. The stranger, here again, is a key word, especially when it comes to politics. 

Which takes me to my next question: why is one of the major focal points of the conservative vs. liberal parties the stranger? And where does this political orientation really come from? 

A study called Moving Morality Beyond the In-Group looked into how liberals and conservatives differ in their moral values.⁵ The researchers used the 5 core moral values based on the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) that were evolved to help direct social decisions and judgments: Harm (decisions that hurt others), Fairness (giving everyone an equal chance), Loyalty (to a country or social group), Authority (respect for leaders, group roles), Purity (cleanliness and religious sanctification). ⁵ The study investigated whether those values are applied differently on people in their own group (in-groups: family, friends, community) or if they are applied equally to outsiders (out-groups: people they don’t usually interact with or people from other races or groups). ⁵ The study shows that both liberals and conservatives endorsed Harm and Fairness. However, conservatives exhibited kindness and fairness mostly to their in-groups (friends, family, or people like them), whereas liberals extended it to everyone, including out-groups (other groups and different backgrounds). ⁵ This indicates that liberals’ moral values are engrained in avoiding hurting people and treating people equally, no matter their race, beliefs, or differences. ⁵

As for Loyalty, Authority, and Purity, conservatives strongly endorsed those values when thinking about their in-groups, both when that group was ‘abstract’ (people like us) and when it was specific (e.g., British people). They were more likely to say things like:

 “It’s important to stick with our group, respect tradition, and keep our group’s values pure”.

Liberals, on the other hand, were less likely to agree with those ideas, especially when they applied to national or cultural in-groups. ⁵

Another paper called Political conservatism as motivated social cognition (theoretical and meta-analytical paper) integrated findings from multiple empirical studies to explain political conservatism through psychological motives. ⁷ The study mentions several psychological variables that predict political conservatism: intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty avoidance, need for cognitive closure, personal need for structure, anxiety arising from mortality salience, group-based dominance, system justification tendencies, rule-following, and negative affect (i.e. how experiencing negative emotions can influence obedience to rules and adherence to social norms). Other related factors include heightened tendencies toward fear, anger, and aggression. ⁷

“Resistance to change and the tendency to prefer safe, traditional and conventional forms of institutions and behavior” Glenn D. Wilson ⁷

I would like to emphasize here a few of these psychological motives: fear of change, fear of the new, fear of uncertainty, fear of death, fear of the stranger. One of the major drivers of conservatives is leaning more on negative affect or pessimism based on fear.

The study also suggests that fear, aggression, threat, and pessimism may be linked to supporting inequality. ⁷ People want certainty and security, which makes them more likely to resist change. This “fear of the stranger” makes a bit more sense now. It is linked to one of the most consistent and enduring targets of right-wing criticism: immigration, which is often portrayed as frightening, confusing, and threatening to the status quo. ⁷

Fear is ruling us these days

Watching the news and social media today, it feels dark, grim and hopeless. Fear, anxiety, anger, and disgust are being felt daily, by visually absorbing and subconsciously internalizing  atrocities happening around the world. There is also this overwhelming feeling of “us versus them”, created by these man-made genocides and war crimes that we are witnessing physically and/or virtually, along with the feeling of consistent helplessness. In addition to this, have you noticed how, when it’s election season, the same topics start appearing again all of a sudden, in the form of fear or hope, immigration being at the center of attention? Lately, fear is tipping the scale in countless peoples’ political views and voting choices. 

An empirical research study conducted worldwide between 2016 and 2018 examined multiple election campaigns across different countries. ⁸ The study found that one of three main communication strategies often emerges: emotional campaigning appeals, which shows high influence in both media coverage and election results. ⁸

Within emotional campaigning, two strategies are usually used: hope/enthusiasm and/or fear/anxiety. ⁸ Enthusiastic citizens are more likely to get involved and participate, but they tend to rely strongly on their pre-existing political views and values. ⁸ In contrast, anxious citizens pay closer attention to campaign information, which makes them more prone to fear and open to persuasion. Furthermore, undecided voters who feel anxious and indecisive can be easily influenced by fear-based messages, giving an advantage to political parties utilising fear to win votes. ⁸

The 2012 U.S. presidential election showed an upward trend in negativity, with up to 80% of all news stories related to the elections focusing on negative advertisements. ⁸

Candidates want to get their message out, hoping to control the terms of the debate. They can air a positive ad and seek to influence voters with that spot. But the news media will likely ignore it. [...] A negative ad, however, can generate controversy and conflict, drawing attention from journalists. Geer JG. (2012) ⁸

I wonder what the percentage is today.

Another noteworthy study looked at how positive and negative emotional appeals in ads for an eco-friendly product affect users’ visual behavior. ⁹ It found that the fear-based ad used for the eye-tracking test experiment held attention for the shortest time, showing how intense the emotion was. ⁹ This is important because it highlights how negative emotional appeals can shape what people focus on. Overall, negative emotions appear to attract users’ attention much faster and more frequently. ⁹

Today these fear-based campaigns are on the rise with the help of social media algorithms. These fear- and anxiety-inducing visuals are pushing more and more for affective polarization. ¹⁰ Among other factors like ideology, identity, social networks, and media ecosystems, what helps create and sustain affective polarization is fear, anger, and disgust. ¹⁰ These three emotions feed off each other, like a vicious cycle, making polarization harder to reduce. Affective polarization can threaten democratic resilience and social cohesion by perpetuating social distancing, moral superiority, and political intolerance. It can also drive radicalization in certain situations, leading individuals to seek security in closed, ideologically homogeneous communities. ¹⁰

Othering is defined as perceiving and treating out-group members as fundamentally different, often  dehumanizing them, reducing them to obstacles, statistics, monsters, terrorists, instead of seeing them as humans, as equals, and destroying opportunities for mutual understanding and compassion. This is what we are witnessing today. We are distancing ourselves more and more from people we disagree with, even if they were, in some cases, family members. But how can one blame people who hold their values and humanities so strongly when they see something horrifically wrong happening daily, live, to their families, friends, communities, and as a result, become closed off within their in-groups?

All you need is Love

A study explored how our brains react when we focus on caring for others versus focusing on ourselves, specifically, when we feel compassion compared to pride. ¹¹ The researchers wanted to understand what happens in the brain when people experience compassion (caring about others’ suffering) versus pride (feeling good about one’s own achievements). Participants were shown pictures meant to evoke either compassion or pride, while their brain activity was recorded using imaging techniques. ¹¹

When people felt compassion, there was increased activity in the midbrain (particularly the periaqueductal gray (PAG)), a region involved in empathy (feeling others’ pain) and nurturing behaviors (caring for and protecting others), similar to the neural patterns seen in parental love during caregiving. ¹¹

Compassion also includes something called emotional mirroring, where we mentally simulate another person’s feelings. So seeing someone suffer can make us feel that pain ourselves. The participants felt both compassion and distress, and their brains showed activity in regions tied to caring, empathy, and emotion mirroring. ¹¹ But interestingly, the areas linked to nurturing (caregiving) weren’t activated. The researchers theorise that this happened because participants couldn’t actually help the people in the images, so they didn’t get the reward or relief that comes from the motivational aspect of compassion: caregiving. In this context, compassion felt more like shared pain than positive care. ¹¹

It seems to be evident that compassion is more complex than the idealistic view we might have of it – that it’s not always easy to feel compassion towards someone who is different from you – someone who holds different values, or who you believe wishes the worst for your loved ones or your group. It can take a little bit of effort and perspective. And even then, do we find ourselves sharing love or sharing pain?

But if we must strive for something to put into the world, we should not take the easy path and contribute to polarization. Instead we should reach out to the 'other' and demand they reach back. Because if the antithesis of love is fear, then we have to make compassion the antidote to fear.