Why American people are scared of Syrian refugees.

Why American people are scared of Syrian refugees.

 

So why the hysteria? While there are plenty of nativists in the country, nativism is not the whole story. Most Americans are not nativists—the country has welcomed millions of refugees and other immigrants. The explanation for the public’s reaction lies elsewhere.

Overreaction to tiny but frightening risks is not a new problem. Americans fear flying much more than driving, even though flying is much safer. Yet the fear of flying has led to massive—probably excessive—public investment in airplane safety while investment in auto safety has languished. Other famous public overreactions, described by Cass Sunstein and Richard Zeckhauser in a recent paper, include the reaction to Love Canal (no evidence of adverse effects), the pesticide Alar (risk of cancer extremely unlikely), shark attacks (hardly ever happen), and the anthrax attack in 2001 (five deaths). Genetically modified organisms and vaccines also terrify some people, despite abundant evidence that both are safe. People vastly overestimate the risk to health and safety of particular threats, leading the government to squander resources eliminating tiny risks while the significant threats (heart disease, car accidents) go unaddressed.

Psychologists who have studied these reactions have identified a number of factorsthat predict when people place excessive weight on a low risk. All of these factors point, with remarkable clarity, to the reaction to the Syrian refugee crisis.

People underestimate risks that are familiar, under their personal control, voluntarily incurred, ignored by the media, and well-understood. Driving an automobile is the best example. Everyone is accustomed to driving, feels in control of the car, and drives by choice. The extraordinarily high risk of an accident becomes background noise that no one pays attention to. By contrast, the opposite qualities are true for the risks that people fear the most, like meltdowns of nuclear reactors, airplane crashes, and cancer-causing food additives—and even more so for terrorism. The Syrian refugees are strangers from an unfamiliar and terrifying part of the world, and they will be placed in neighborhoods where people did not necessarily invite them in. The media has made much of them, particularly after the Paris attacks, and most Americans don’t understand the circumstances that drove them from their country.

People also overreact to risks that may produce especially dreaded or gruesome outcomes. While a car accident can produce mangled bodies, a terrorist attack is an especially gruesome event, often involving hostage-taking and terrifying helplessness. Terrorist attacks victimize children as well as adults, and there is no practical way to avoid them. People are more likely to tolerate risks when the accompanying benefits are clear—that’s why, in the end, people fly. But any benefits from refugee resettlement are remote, intangible, and indirect. People also fear risks of human origin (vaccines) more than risks of natural origin (the flu), and terrorism is very much the fruit of human ingenuity.