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You, of course, are perfectly within your rights to resist these attempts at fear-based persuasion. And I myself am not fond of our national reliance on manipulating people with fear, so I don't begrudge you your resistance. In fact, I plan to ramp up the fear a little later on, just to illustrate how fear-based messages can backfire.
First, though, I want to explain why all my arguments up to now have had a flavor of "blame the activist" (or, more precisely, blame the situational and cognitive processes that may be disrupting the coordination and effectiveness of activists, particularly American activists). I haven't given much room to "blame the powers that be."
The upside to blaming the collective "us" is that blame conveys what might be called "agency regard." This is not an established social psychology term--I'm inventing it. To blame someone is to treat them like an agent, someone capable of doing something different from what they actually did. Interpreted charitably, getting "blamed" can even be empowering, because the blamers implicitly consider you capable of taking responsibility not to do blameworthy things in the future. Otherwise, presumably, they wouldn't bother wasting their breath. With regard to what I've written so far, my "blame" of cognitive and social influence processes also comes with the suggestion that we have within in our responsible agentive reach the power to stop fast-track and flush the TPP.
The relevant social psychology concepts here are " locus of control " and " self-efficacy " (actually, these are personality psychology concepts, but social psychologists use them too). Those with a high locus of control believe they have power over what happens in their life. They also tend to take more personal responsibility for their own actions and outcomes. For instance, high locus of control types are more likely than those scoring at the opposite end of the scale to take practical steps to ensure that good things happen rather than bad things. They put their seatbelt on when riding in a car; they try to avoid doing things known to cause cancer, they make use of condoms when having sex with someone they've just met, etc. On the down side, they are also more likely to blame themselves harshly for failures, including failures that are largely beyond their control. This self-blame can sometimes have debilitating effects, like feeling bad about yourself and everything that can go with that.
But if blame is the dark side of attributing responsibility, attributing responsibility is the bright side of blame. A reality-sensitive locus of control is probably better in the long run than an undiscerningly high one, but you're safer in the passenger side of a car driven by someone with a high locus of control.
Self-efficacy is a related concept with a different focus. Those with a strong sense of self-efficacy believe in their ability to accomplish their goals--this isn't about blame and responsibility so much as it is about being optimistic that trying to be efficacious will lead to being efficacious. Believing in one's capacity for effectiveness doesn't guarantee actual effectiveness of course. The so-called Law of Attraction-- popularized by recycled Horatio Alger myths like The Secret -- is magical thinking with no basis in science. Such a belief in one's own efficacy does, however, make one's effectiveness statistically more likely.
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