The Chinese Robber Fallacy and How Media Makes Us Think The World Is Worse Than It Actually Is
It’s kind of insane how many robberies are committed by Chinese people. I mean it would be trivially easy for me to give you an example of a Chinese robbery committed for every day of the year.
One robbery committed by a Chinese perpetrator for each day of the year, that’s crazy, right? It must denote some sort of underlying connection between Chinese people and the crime of robbery — right?
Well, no actually, it doesn’t really denote anything of value at all. There are approximately 1.4 billion Chinese people in the world and inevitably some number of that population will commit robbery. 365 robberies would, in reality, be an unbelievably low frequency of infractions committed by Chinese people given the population.
But without that context, it can be incredibly easy to be caught up in the presentation of numbers and start to believe a given phenomenon represents a far greater problem than it actually does.
What I just described to you is a concept called the Chinese Robber Fallacy. Originally coined by Alyssa Vance, the fallacy refers to the act of using “a generic problem to attack a specific person or group, even though other groups have the problem just as much (or even more so).” The fallacy manifests itself in many ways contemporarily. Numbers relating to adverse reactions to vaccines, crime rates of undocumented migrants, ratios of bad police encounters, and so on and so on ad infinitum.
This phenomenon has existed for as long as people have been recognizing patterns in their environment. However, today I want to shine a light on two specifically blatant venues in which this issue emerges. Those being 24/7 news media broadcasts and social media, where sensationalism largely drives what is put before the public eye.
An Atmosphere of Fear
In the mid-1970’s, environmental psychologist Roger Hart spent 2-years observing and interviewing children in a small Vermont town, analyzing patterns of play among the youth and measuring the distances children as young as 4 or 5 were allowed to travel without adult supervision.
At the time, he found that the children of the town largely had the freedom to go wherever they wanted, even exploring the surrounding forests on the border of the area. Parents largely weren’t worried about things like abduction or stranger danger, fear wasn’t on the minds of the public.
Then, several decades later, Hart decided to revisit the town, only to find something very different. What was once a place characterized by an atmosphere of childhood exploration and safety had transformed — with the circle of unsupervised freedom once enjoyed by the town’s children having massively shrunk. Going from the outskirts of the town to barely even encompassing their own backyards.
The strange thing about this transformation was that it wasn’t predicated on any major event or change in the town. Crime had remained stable, physically not much had changed, and demographically there hadn’t been any strong shift, with children who had been part of the original 1970’s study continuing to live there and raising their own families. Still, an atmosphere of fear — once gleefully absent — had captured the minds of parents across the area.
I bring up this example because it exemplifies how much our perceptions around danger can change the ways in which we behave, even when nothing in our direct environment has occurred to give cause for those fears. These perceptions are largely shaped by a media landscape that presents us with a barrage of tragedies, horrors, and sorrows, which characterize the world as a dangerous place in which any wrong step or lack of precaution may result in disaster.
There’s even a term to describe this phenomenon, “Mean World Syndrome”. The concept originates from the research of sociologist George Gerbner, who theorized that those who consumed a heavier diet of violent news and entertainment became convinced the world was a more dangerous place than it actually was. “What this means is that if you are growing up in a home where there is more than say three hours of television per day, for all practical purposes you live in a meaner world — and act accordingly — than your next-door neighbor who lives in the same world but watches less television.”
Since the 90’s, violent crime in the U.S. has broadly been on the decline, with brief spikes coming in 2016 and 2020 — neither of which came close to the high’s seen at the end of the 20th century. 2023 saw one of the lowest rates of violent crime in 50 years, yet this wasn’t reflected in the feelings of the public, with Gallup polling finding that American’s believed crime had actually increased in comparison to the year before.
Several factors related to our media consumption contribute to this discrepancy. The scope of news coverage has evolved over time, shifting from localized reporting to increasingly national and even global coverage.
This broadening of news coverage means that even incidents that might have once been considered isolated or uncommon now receive widespread attention. The 24/7 news cycle demands a constant stream of attention-grabbing headlines, leading to a focus on negative and fear-inducing stories. This not only distorts our perceptions but also creates a feedback loop, where heightened fear leads to increased demand for such content, further perpetuating the cycle.
As the Chinese Robber fallacy showed us, we are wired to look for patterns even when they aren’t really there, so increasingly being bombarded with scary story after scary story inevitably leads us to the conclusion that bad things are happening more often than they truly are.
Additionally, the rise of social media amplifies this effect, as sensationalized stories spread rapidly, often without context, transforming into more exaggerated forms as they are shared from person to person.
The Process in Practice
I’ve seen this process in action myself recently here in New York when it comes to the catastrophizing of crime on the subway. Following a series of high-profile incidents on NYC trains, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the National Guard would be stationed at different points throughout the subway system.
While reading the headlines of some of the MTA associated tragedies over the last few months may lead one to believe that NYC subway stations are incredibly dangerous spaces, at this point we’ve well established that perception don’t always align 1 to 1 with reality. In mid-2022, a New York Times analysis found that there was about one violent crime per million on the subway, with the rate of overall crime falling by 3 percent in 2023. That downward trend stalled early into 2024 with the number of major crimes jumping in January before falling once again in February.
The decision to have the national guard come in was largely one of optics, made to make the public feel safer rather than address any real influx of criminal activity. Governor Hochul herself has acknowledged as much, stating on MSNBC that “If you feel better walking past someone in a uniform to make sure that someone doesn’t bring a knife or a gun on the subway, then that’s exactly why I did it, I want to change the psychology around crime in New York City.”
A similar situation with inflated perceptions surrounding danger came when a handful of women in NYC started reporting that they had been randomly punched by a man on Tik Tok and Instagram.
As these stories came out, people noticed how similar they were to one another, and rampant speculation erupted as the public began trying to come to conclusions about what was happening. Theories ranged from a serial puncher, to coordinated groups of men assaulting people, to the return of the knockout game urban legend.
However, despite the urge to try and connect these stories into a cohesive narrative, an actual concrete connection between the perpetrators of the attacks has yet to emerge, with the women’s descriptions of their attackers differing from one another and no one person being linked to multiple attacks so far.
While the situation could evolve from here, revealing evidence of actual coordination between these attacks, it wouldn’t be that surprising if they were all completely discrete events. In a city of 8.3 million, 13 or so people being punched in similar ways — while unsettling — could just be a coincidence. One that social media algorithmically presents in such a manner that it makes us see constellations where truly there are just lone stars.
How We Can Escape the Mean World
Solving the problem of media over-selling how dangerous the world is represents a monumental task that will take decades to truly address. That being said, there are epistemic practices we can employ in our own lives and bring forth into our local communities to start seeing improvements.
For one, just having the awareness of how these cognitive failings can affect us helps in providing the tools to better metabolize the information we are presented with by different media sources. By recognizing the tendencies of media to present us the sensational stories, individuals can cultivate a habit of skepticism and discernment, allowing them to become more resilient to these exaggerated perceptions.
Limiting our consumption of more dour or negative news can also be an effective means of protecting ourselves from developing warped perceptions of the world. If you find that your mood is constantly becoming worse every time you turn on the news or look at social media, it might be a sign for you to redirect your attention to something else, at least until you find yourself feeling more emotionally regulated. This might include doing things such as designating specific times of the day for catching up on current events or limiting exposure to certain types of content that tend to induce distress.
It can be a challenge following through with this approach, as it often feels like if you aren’t keeping up to date with every event occurring in the world you are committing some fundamental moral failing of remaining unaware of what ought to be calling for your attention. However, it’s crucial to recognize that staying informed doesn’t necessarily mean subjecting oneself to a constant barrage of negative news.
You’re not helping anyone by making yourself miserable, in fact you’re more likely to end up doing the opposite by contributing to a downward spiral of magnified negative sentiment in the discourse at large.
On the other end of the equation, actively taking the time to look for more positive news stories can go a long way in realigning the scales of your media diet. Looking to reporting around uplifting stories, acts of kindness, or solutions to societal problems can offer a refreshing perspective amidst the deluge of negativity. By actively seeking out and sharing these stories, people can contribute to a more balanced understanding of the world around them.
Ultimately, escaping a worse perception of the world requires a collective effort to reshape the tone of the discourse surrounding societal issues. Just as falsely associating robbery with Chinese individuals based on isolated incidents is misguided and harmful, so too is succumbing to the pervasive narrative of fear perpetuated by sensationalized media.
The road ahead may be long and challenging, but by remaining committed to the truth, we can overcome the distortions that threaten to leave us fearful and emerge stronger together.
