Stress, Uncertainty and Conspiracy in the Age of Lockdown
Why do we get stressed by things we don’t know? And how does this lead us to conspiratorial thinking?
As children, we feared monsters emerging from the darkness of our closets.
As we grow, our fears gradually change. As teenagers, we feared rejection by our friends and our crushes.
In university and college, we’d stress over our grades and our futures.
Now, we stress over COVID-19.
The Brain, Fear, and Prediction
No matter how old we get, the root of many of our fears and anxieties is uncertainty. The brain predicts changes in the environment. It perceives patterns in our environment, to connect cause with effect.
Think of your retina. There is a spot that cannot sense any light whatsoever, called the blindspot. However, our brain fills in the probable details. Our brain does such a great job that we rarely, if ever, notice the blindspot.
When it comes to interpreting more complex patterns or predicting events without sufficient prior information, we feel uncertain. This uncertainty drives fear and anxiety across every stage of our lives. We don’t know what’s in our closet, or how…
