Fear

Fear is a primary negative emotion rooted in the human need for protection from harm. Emotion theorists such as Robert Plutchik have emphasised that fear typically involves movement away from threat and signals an experience of powerlessness in the face of overwhelming force or hierarchy. It triggers four stress responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. These instinctive survival strategies prompt individuals either to confront a threat, escape from it, become immobile to avoid detection, or appease the source of danger.

Fear operates both individually and collectively. It emerges not only from immediate dangers but also from perceived imbalances—people fear not just direct threats, but situations they cannot influence or control. When individuals or groups feel powerless to shape outcomes, they feel more fearful.

Unlike anger, which is reactive and directed at others, fear is anticipatory, situation-based, and oriented towards the future. It helps us adapt. It prompts precautionary actions or motivates people to seek protection from trusted authorities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, fear of contagion led to large-scale behavioural coordination—mask-wearing, lockdowns, and social distancing. In such cases, sustaining vigilance and caution promotes collective safety.

Fear has other political uses. Politicians often exploit it to cast themselves as guardians or to justify exceptional measures. Rhetorical strategies such as crisis-talk, victimhood references, catastrophisation, or “worry chains”—sequences of potential or real harms linked together to suggest an ongoing or escalating crisis—heightens the emotional salience of fear, mobilise citizens, and frame incumbents as the only source of stability.

Fear may also be used to delegitimise political opponents by portraying them as internal threats. The emotional response remains, but the framing shifts: fear can create unity or sow division. Its role in politics is functional.

In the MORES project, fear is a central emotion of study because of its influences on public perceptions and political behaviour. It fosters compliance, disengagement, or aggressive counteraction, depending on how it is framed. Fear-based narratives can encourage civic preparedness in response to collective threats (climate change, war, terrorism) but they can equally justify repression and increase polarisation. Fear becomes morally charged when it is used to defend threatened values, identities, or communities. In such cases, it helps define what societies believe is worth protecting through mobilisation or policy, and what must be feared to preserve it.

FURTHER READING:

Albertson, B., & Gadarian, S. K. (2015). Anxious politics: Democratic citizenship in a threatening world. Cambridge University Press.

Busher, J., Giurlando, P., & Sullivan, G. B. (2018). Introduction: The emotional dynamics of backlash politics beyond anger, hate, fear, pride, and loss. Humanity & Society, 42(4), 399-409.

De Castella K., McGarty, C. (2011). “Two leaders, two wars: A psychological analysis of fear and anger content in political rhetoric about terrorism.” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 11(1), 180–200.

Furedi, F. (2007). Politics of fear. Bloomsbury Publishing.