There have been nearly 300 mass shootings so far this year, but you've probably only
heard about a handful.
Why are we so apathetic to these incidences of mass murder?
According to federal statutes, a "mass killing" is when three or more people are killed in
one incident.
The stats you hear in the news get confusing because everyone counts these things differently,
but according to director of research at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, Grant
Duwe; there were 909 mass killings from 1900 to 1999.[1] In the 90s, it averaged a little
more than 4 per year.
But from 2000 to 2013, we averaged more than 11 per year.[2] And, that's using federal
definitions, if we include people who were wounded or killed by gunfire in one incident:
we find 294 mass shootings occured in 2015 ALONE.[3]
Even though there are more mass killings now, we're not seeing that reflected in national
attention.
We just seem… meh on the whole thing.
According to Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, 29% of local
news stories in 2005 were about crime, by 2012 it had dropped to 17%.[4] Why?
Because people are habituating.
Habituation is the act of psychological adaptation, we're getting used to hearing mass shootings.
The story doesn't change, and when it doesn't change, we begin to ignore it.
As President Obama intimated this week, they're becoming "routine."
We literally cannot focus on each individual crime, and that causes psychological numbness.[5]
Genocides, holocausts, ethnic cleanses, civil wars, insurgencies, all of these have become
routine…
I mean, chances are you started tune out during that LIST just now!
Media theorists and psychologists call this the "issue attention cycle."
As described by Anthony Downs book Up and Down with ecology -- the "issue-attention
cycle:" first, we are alarmed, "How could this happen?!"
we cry!
And then move through the stages…
As the problem becomes real, we discover the solution isn't easy; after a period of intense
focus, and debate, public interest declines; and, eventually, we enter the post-problem
stage.
Here, quote the issue falls into a "twilight realm of lesser attention of spasmodic recurrences
of interest."
Often says Downs, by the Post-problem stage 5, we've created programs, institutions and
policies to try to solve the problem at hand… though not always[6].
In the end, the cycle can be reinvigorated when a new iteration presents itself -- like
a massive school shooting, theater shooting, military base shooting or the like.
Each narrative is novel, and the novelty reinvigorates attention, but otherwise, school shootings
are joining the list of things we just don't have the psychological wherewithal to stick
to.
Humans HAVE to habituate, without this biological mandate, every tree would be a NEW tree -- we'd
never be able to discern new information from the repeated information surrounding it.[7]
Because of habituation, MASS might be the biggest obstacle.[8] After each tragedy, the
media attempts to implement "frame changing" to move the narrative around, pulling the
novel information out of the clutter.
In coverage of Columbine; the media attached faces and names to victims; but to change
the frame, Sandy Hook's coverage was led by gun control debates raging through the country.[9]
These two mass shootings weren't necessarily novel situations, but they mixed personal
stories with new coverage, and thus they stood out in our national attention.
As described by a paper in 2014's Homicide Studies, without novel ways to tell an old
story, we (and the media) pretty much ignore tragedies.
Dr. Paul Slovic, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon writes, "When it
comes to eliciting compassion, the identified individual victim, with a face and a name,
has no peer.[10]"
By covering these events with numbers instead of names, by covering them as much as we do,
and by failing to create institutions and policies to fix the problems, we're stuck.
If you blame media, blame government, blame humans; you'd be right each time.
To break the cycle, we need to make a change.
Ignoring it, refusing to make changes, or acknowledge a problem and hoping the shootings
stop won't work (and hasn't), but if we actively adopt some solution to fix the mass shooting
problem, future stories will be automatically frame-changed.
Hard science doesn't have an easy answer to this social issue, instead we're left with
the difficult one.
Look at our failings, find a solution, and fix the problem.
In Psychological Science Agenda Dr. Slovic wrote, "The repetitiveness of such atrocities,
ignored by powerful people and nations, and by the general public, calls for explanations
that may reflect some fundamental deficiency in our humanity -- a deficiency that, once
identified, might possibly be overcome."
Tell me about your feelings down below.
Our sister shows Seeker and TestTube News are covering this story today also.
Even though we outlined the data, we left it to TestTube News to answer, why are there
so many mass shootings?
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