How Anxiety, Stress, and Media Shape What We Believe
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Sometimes I wonder if people are really as open-minded as they think. If, for example, you’re only championing one passion — one cause — are you truly open to a differing point of view?
In a world where an opposing idea, opinion, or outlook can suddenly turn a good friend into an enemy, I’m guessing the answer is no. We may not be as open-minded as we believe.
If that’s true, then the question shouldn’t be “If you don’t share my point of view, you’re wrong.”
It should be, “What’s influencing how I see this?”
When Individuality Isn’t the Whole Story
There’s a tendency to assume that our opinions are the product of independent thought — a reflection of who we are. But what if they’re not?
Since early 2025, I’ve been writing about the need for more nuance before we declare ourselves firmly on the side of “right.” That theme runs through essays like When It Happens to Us More, where comparative suffering quietly shuts down empathy rather than expanding it.
Under that umbrella sits an uncomfortable question:
Are you making an argument while under stress duress?
If you’re feeling that familiar heavy-chested pressure, racing thoughts, or a tense body, your perspective may not be coming from your most reflective self. It may be coming from anxiety.
I explore this more deeply in Wired to Be Human, but the short version matters here.
The Biology of Anxiety — How the Modern Keeps us Anxious
Our ancestors needed anxiety to survive — but in today’s world of constant alerts and invisible pressures, that same biology keeps us stuck in overdrive. Learn how modern life hijacks the body’s stress systems and what it takes to calm them down.
Keep reading
How Anxiety Changes the Way We Think
Anxiety activates the brain’s fight-flight-freeze system — our threat detection network. This system evolved to keep us alive, not to help us solve complex social or moral problems.
When it’s active:
- Stress hormones like cortisol rise
- Attention narrows toward perceived threat
- Activity in the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for reasoning, impulse control, and nuance — is reduced
This isn’t a flaw. It’s ancient wiring.
I’ve written before about how this prolonged activation shows up in everyday life, especially in Allostatic Load and PTSD, where the body continues to carry stress long after the original threat has passed.
The problem is that the same system now responds to deadlines, traffic jams, social media outrage, and 24-hour news cycles.
In short, when this system is running the show, we don’t think at our best.
Anxiety, Media, and the Illusion of Independent Thought
Knowing that anxiety dampens reasoning, it’s worth pausing to ask:
Am I acting independently here — or am I being influenced by media, social contagion, and trends on social media?
What if the voice I’m hearing doesn’t fully belong to me?
What if it’s being driven by impulse, repetition, and emotional arousal?
(How I feel versus how I think.)
This same tension appears in Why Motivation Falters — And Identity Keeps Us Stuck, where identity hardens under stress and change begins to feel threatening rather than clarifying.
We already know humans are susceptible to suggestion. Repetition shapes perception. Familiar narratives feel true simply because they’re familiar.
And increasingly, algorithms decide what we see most often.
Why Confirmation Bias Is Making Us Anxious, Divided, and Exhausted
We’re wired to double down on what we already believe—even when it harms us. Confirmation bias is leaving us anxious, divided, and exhausted. Here’s how…
Keep reading What Research Shows About Media Exposure and Belief
This isn’t just philosophical speculation.
In a real-world experiment, researchers took people who regularly watched a single cable news network and paid them to watch a competing network for several weeks. What happened next was subtle — and revealing.
Participants didn’t report consciously changing their values.
They didn’t feel persuaded.
Yet their beliefs shifted.
Sustained exposure altered what felt important, what felt threatening, and what felt true. When participants returned to their usual media habits, many of those belief changes faded.
This mirrors what I’ve observed — and written about — in When Life Falls Apart, where prolonged stress destabilizes identity and leaves people searching for certainty in a world that no longer feels safe.
Chronic stress doesn’t just fracture our sense of self — it can quietly reshape what we believe to be true, a theme explored more directly in When Life Falls Apart and expanded here through the lens of media exposure and nervous system overload.
The implication is uncomfortable but important:
If our sense of truth can move simply through repeated exposure — especially while our nervous systems are already under stress — then conviction isn’t always the product of clarity or independent reasoning.
Sometimes, it’s the echo of what we’ve been immersed in while anxious.
A Better Question to Ask Ourselves
So perhaps the most meaningful question isn’t “Who’s right?”
It’s this:
Who am I when my nervous system is calm?
Because only from that place can we begin to tell the difference between beliefs that are genuinely ours — and those borrowed while we were overwhelmed, activated, and just trying to feel safe.
That distinction — between reaction and reflection — sits at the heart of everything I write, from Taking Responsibility for Your Past to my longer-form work on how modern life pulls us away from our biological grounding.
I’m rooting for you,
Jonathan.
References
Stress, Anxiety, and the Brain
McEwen, B. S. (2007).
Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: Central role of the brain.
Physiological Reviews, 87(3), 873–904.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17615391/
Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009).
Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function.
Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 410–422.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2648
Emotion, Threat, and Decision-Making
Phelps, E. A. (2006).
Emotion and cognition: Insights from studies of the human amygdala.
Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 27–53.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16318588/
Pessoa, L. (2008).
On the relationship between emotion and cognition.
Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9, 148–158.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2317
Media Exposure and Belief Formation (CNN Study)
Broockman, D. E., & Kalla, J. L. (2022).
The manifold effects of partisan media on viewers’ beliefs and attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers.
Working paper.
https://osf.io/jrw26/
Yale summary of the CNN exposure experiment:
https://news.yale.edu/2022/04/13/partisan-media-cable-viewers-shift-attitudes-after-changing-channel
UC Berkeley summary:
https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/04/07/when-fox-news-viewers-flip-to-cnn-their-opinions-shift-too-study-finds/
Repetition and Perceived Truth
Dechêne, A., et al. (2010).
The truth about the truth: A meta-analytic review of the truth effect.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 238–257.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20023210/
Join the conversation
If this resonated—or challenged you—I’d genuinely like to hear your perspective. Thoughtful disagreement and lived experience are welcome.
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