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22 Hope and the Denial of Stress in the Nuclear Age
Pages 467-473

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From page 467...
... Haifa University, Haifa, Israel It must be with a shared sense of frustration that we try to comprehend all the incredible things that are in store for us if nuclear war breaks out, and at the same time, to hear about the minimal level of involvement with the issues by the general population. This discrepancy, which was the focus that Susan Fiske took in her paper on adults' images of nuclear war (this volume)
From page 468...
... It is of some interest to note that adults exaggerate the risks of disasters from nuclear power plants, as compared with the risks of living under a dam, which could break and cause flooding, even though objective analysis of the risks suggests that the second threat is much more serious than the first one. One wonders whether people are not displacing some of their worries to something that is related to nuclear war, like nuclear power plants, and expressing their fears by focusing on a less-devastating aspect.
From page 469...
... I believe that in the sphere of nuclear threats people are now stuck at a level of defense that is particularly difficult to alter. Research suggests that the first and easiest form of denial is the denial of personal relevance (Breznitz, 1983~.
From page 470...
... It is only going to push people into more extreme fortes of denial, and indeed there are more extreme forms of denial, like denial of information. There has been information presented about some children who do not want to hear or think about it, which is a more extreme form of denial, since it implies that the filter has already been placed at the point of information input.
From page 471...
... I have seen the most gorgeous, the most powerful, the most secure, and the most self-assured, crumble beneath its force." The nuclear threat has little social relevance, because we are all in the same boat. If some people were more threatened than others, then it could have been translated into a motivational force, but it is a great equalizer, and therefore it has very little social, interactional relevance to everyday life.
From page 472...
... At first it was thought that if people are scared, then they do something to protect themselves; this in turn reduces fear, which reduces the motivation to protect themselves. The danger then grows and fear goes up again, leading to a continuous dynamic flow between action and emotion.
From page 473...
... There is then a distinct possibility that the parents challenge this, pushing their feelings in the opposite direction from those of their children. They fry to minimize the danger of the nuclear threat and actually lose the ability to honestly discuss the issue with them.


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