{"id":56054,"date":"2020-12-18T07:26:22","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T12:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56054"},"modified":"2020-12-18T07:26:22","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T12:26:22","slug":"how-the-state-spreads-mass-hysteria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56054","title":{"rendered":"How the State Spreads Mass Hysteria"},"content":{"rendered":"

How the State Spreads Mass Hysteria<\/a><\/h3>\n

\"hysteria\"<\/h2>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

The\u00a0history of mass hysteria<\/a>, or mass sociogenic illness is fascinating.\u00a0Cases<\/a>\u00a0of<\/a>\u00a0mass<\/a>\u00a0hysteria<\/a>\u00a0have been documented since the\u00a0Middle Ages<\/a>. Let me just mention a few of the more recent cases.<\/p>\n

When a radio play by Orson Welles,\u00a0War of the World<\/a>s<\/em>,\u00a0was broadcasted in 1938 shortly after the suspension\u00a0of the\u00a0Munich agreement<\/a>, the play allegedly caused panic among listeners, who thought that they were under attack by Martians.<\/p>\n

Another intriguing case is an episode of\u00a0a Portuguese TV show called\u00a0Strawberries with Sugar<\/em><\/a>. In the episode, the characters were infected by a life-threatening virus. After the show, more than three hundred students reported similar symptoms as the ones experienced by the TV show characters such as rashes and difficulty breathing. Some schools even closed. The Portuguese National Institute for Medical Emergency concluded that the virus did not exist in reality and that the symptoms were caused by mass hysteria.Similarly, on\u00a0Emirates flight 203 in September 2018<\/a>, dozens of passengers started to believe they were sick after observing other passengers with flu-like symptoms. As a consequence of the panic, the whole flight was quarantined. In the end only a few passengers had a common cold or the seasonal flu.<\/p>\n

It is well known that there\u00a0exist\u00a0nocebo effects<\/a>, which are the opposite of placebo effects. Due the placebo effect, a person recovers from an illness because she expects to do so. When we suffer a nocebo effect, on the other hand, we get ill just because we expect to become ill.1<\/a>\u00a0In a self-fulfilling prophecy, the expectation can cause the symptoms. Anxiety and fear\u00a0exacerbate<\/a>\u00a0this process.2<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the State Spreads Mass Hysteria The\u00a0history of mass hysteria, or mass sociogenic illness is fascinating.\u00a0Cases\u00a0of\u00a0mass\u00a0hysteria\u00a0have been documented since the\u00a0Middle Ages. Let me just mention a few of the more recent cases. When a radio play by Orson Welles,\u00a0War of the Worlds,\u00a0was broadcasted in 1938 shortly after the suspension\u00a0of the\u00a0Munich agreement, the play allegedly caused […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[302,29186,7617,30730,16345,30731,1309],"class_list":["post-56054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-fear","tag-mass-hysteria","tag-mises-institute","tag-nacebo-effects","tag-philipp-bagus","tag-self-fulfilling-prophecy","tag-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56055,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56054\/revisions\/56055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}