The Science of Fear

Why We Fear the Things We Should Not - and Put Ourselves in Great Danger

By: Daniel Gardner

Narrated by: Scott Peterson

Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

From terror attacks to the War on Terror, bursting real-estate bubbles to crystal meth epidemics, sexual predators to poisonous toys from China, our list of fears seems to be exploding. And yet, we are the safest and healthiest humans in history. Irrational fear is running amok, and often with tragic results. In the months after 9/11, when people decided to drive instead of fly - believing they were avoiding risk - road deaths rose by 1,595. Those lives were lost to fear.

The Science of Fear is a disarmingly cheerful roundtrip shuttle to the new brain science, dissecting the fears that misguide and manipulate us every day. As award-winning journalist Daniel Gardner demonstrates, irrational fear springs from how humans miscalculate risks. Our hunter-gatherer brains evolved during the old Stone Age and struggle to make sense of a world utterly unlike the one that made them. Numbers, for instance, confuse us. Our "gut" tells us that even if there aren't "50,000 predators...on the Internet prowling for children," as a recent U.S. Attorney General claimed, then there must be an awful lot. And even if our "head" discovers that the number is baseless and no one actually knows the truth - there could be 100,000 or 500,000 - we are still more fearful simply because we heard the big number. And it is not only politicians and the media that traffic in fearmongering. Corporations fatten their bottom lines with fear. Interest groups expand their influence with fear. Officials boost their budgets with fear. With more information, warnings and scary stories coming at us every day from every direction, we are more prone than ever to needlessly worry.

©2008 Daniel Gardner (P)2009 Gildan Media Corp

Critic reviews

"Excellent.... analyses everything from the media's predilection for irrational scare stories to the cynical use of fear by politicians pushing a particular agenda....What could easily have been a catalogue of misgovernance and stupidity instead becomes a cheery corrective to modern paranoia." ( The Economist)

awesomw book

I realy enjoyed this book . It is one that i will listen to again.

Best of the bunch

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This book should be required reading for being a human.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Science of Fear?

Breaking down the approach of climate scientists to relating data to different audiences. This and topics like is are where you learn if you're reading something with a partisan agenda or not.

What about Scott Peterson’s performance did you like?

It's easy to end up flat or condescending in these types of reads, he does neither.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Fear: It's not real, it's science.

Any additional comments?

This book really stands out compared to others like "The Culture Of Fear" (bought it, made it three chapters in before the author starts making examples that fall apart under his own logic). This book really looks at how fear forms, how it develops, and how it grows and spreads in people. It stays with the overall topic of fear itself with illustrative examples, and makes comparisons of different variations of the same theme. This book sticks with the subject matter as stated, it's not a euphemism where 'people' means 'them' and 'wrong' means 'disagrees with my subjective opinion'.

If you're someone who asks "what do we all do when we fear something" this is the book for you. If you're always asking "why are those morons always afraid of the wrong things, why can't they just be like us", there are others out there written with you in mind.

Great Rational Read!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

A very interesting look at the world in which we live.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

It really brought home a lot of the things I've thought about for years regarding fear marketing and the politics of fear. It doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum you lean towards. Very informative.

Excellent book. Highly recommended.

This is the best book on the subject that I've came across. I liked both the theoretical explanations, and practical examples with recommendations. It is impartial, and also shows how the risks of the rare but emotionally significant events are overinflated and overused by media and politicians, and also how our own brains and "guts" mislead us in our daily life. I liked both the writing style, and the narration. I recommend it to everyone.

Good but a little too cynical

I really enjoyed this book. It presented the material in an innovative way that made it easy to understand

My only real complaint is that it comes off as a little too cynical about politicians and big business that peddle in fear. The reference to cognitive dissonance doesn't really mitigate that in my view

Don't be afraid

Gardner uses many studies that show that people make decisions with their gut and rarely do we make them based on evidence and critical thinking. We need to become more aware of how and why we fear so much.
We live in the safest of times in human history, but we are more afraid than ever. It does not make sense, but it seems to be the case. Why can't we do an objective analysis is a major issue for those listening.

Open your eyes to the real world

Daniel Gardner moves through the basics of genetics, history and culture and then moves into the mathematical science (statistics) to really show what we fear does not add up. This book isn't a self help guide to fixing your fears and growing as a human being, but rather the nuts and bolts of how fear works in our lives, why it seems silly to be controlled by it and how we should really work with it. Don't get me wrong, danger is real, fear is a choice, this book will help you see that and hopefully overcome fear to really get on with life.

Excellent breakdown of how internal and external factors cause us to be afraid

It does an amazing job explaining different internal (psychological, evolutionary, etc.) and external (political, cultural, etc.) factors that cause us to be reasonably and unreasonably afraid.

The takeaways are:
1. be aware that your gut/ fast-thinking brain does its job mostly well but isn't always reliable (emotions often guide it; it's not meant is to deal with complex things taking into account all the potentially important nuances, etc.);
2. we suck at assessing risks and should rely on statistics more to guide personal decisions as well as government policy.

Did you know that Dan Gardner’s books have been praised by Daniel Kahneman? 😍

Very profound

My reaction for most of the ideas presented was "How was I that stupid before?!". It is a great listen.

Excellent synthesis and analysis

I actually listened to this book twice because I found it so insightful and interesting. The author brings together several diverse fields in an understandable and persuasive way. He debunks several common fears and helps put others in their proper perspective.

There are many books on the market that deal with error, cognitive bias and heuristics. This book presents enough information to make the concepts understandable and relevant without getting overly academic. He then provides concrete, real world examples of how they influence behavior and perceptions.

The author tackles cancer, terrorism, pollution, pedophiles and violent crime. He gives a very realistic analysis of popular perceptions of these risks. Then he dissects them in terms of the actual risk they pose to the average person (much less than perceived) and convincingly shows where the discrepancies arise.

He covers psychology, evolutionary biology, heuristics, history, politics and statistics but somehow keeps the material from getting dry or overly technical. It's a delicate balance and he manages to keep up the balancing act for the entire book.

The book is an excellent antidote to the alarmist "is your family safe?!" stories that the press currently engages in.