Caught a link to an essay from a Harvard psychology professor:
The TL;DR gist is that in the absence of significant threats, the brain widens the classification to include what are, in reality, lesser threats.
To bring this back to my thread title: because the country is so safe overall, mass shootings garner a level of attention they wouldn't otherwise, because they are, really, "lighting strikes." They happen, but they don't happen often and are very unlikely to happen to YOU.
(It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway(!): Nothing above should suggest that we not try to STOP mass shootings by identifying troubled people and getting them help, etc.)
R
The TL;DR gist is that in the absence of significant threats, the brain widens the classification to include what are, in reality, lesser threats.
You can probably think of many similar situations in which problems never seem to go away, because people keep changing how they define them. This is sometimes called “concept creep,” or “moving the goalposts,” and it can be a frustrating experience. How can you know if you’re making progress solving a problem, when you keep redefining what it means to solve it? My colleagues and I wanted to understand when this kind of behavior happens, why, and if it can be prevented.
To bring this back to my thread title: because the country is so safe overall, mass shootings garner a level of attention they wouldn't otherwise, because they are, really, "lighting strikes." They happen, but they don't happen often and are very unlikely to happen to YOU.
(It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway(!): Nothing above should suggest that we not try to STOP mass shootings by identifying troubled people and getting them help, etc.)
R