A few weeks ago, millions of people around the world followed the news about the disappearance of the capsule Titan which was carrying five people to tour the wreck of the Titanic on the Atlantic Ocean.
Many people were glued to their mobile phones or television watching for an update while others searched social media platforms making hashtags like #OceanGate trending and several news feeds.
People were interested to know the fate of the very rich people who paid around a quarter of a million dollars for a journey that was supposed to last less than eight minutes yet there was a point where such interest turned into an obsession, as stated by a report published on the British news appear, The Independent.
A psychologist commenting on this obsession explained that it stems from the fact that many people related to the feeling of the five passengers who were trapped inside the titan as some of us may have experienced a degree of uncertainty in our lives and we could imagine being helpless with other humans and not know what to do.
While other psychologists believed that this obsession with rich and famous people is an example of what is known as voyeurism, which is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “the activity of getting pleasure from watching other people’s private lives”.
This phenomenon explained why many spend hours on social media following the lifestyles of the rich and famous and sometimes even those who are trying to be famous and for being called an influencer.
While following the news of the missing Titan I kept asking the question what made the five passengers take such a risk?
According to a Harvard psychologist who specialises in social cognition and decision-making, one reason that some people are willing to spend so much money to be put in great danger is to break free from the mundanity of their everyday lives or because they believe the venture is almost too big to fail.
In other words, such people are so rich that activities taken by other people no longer interest them or give them the same level of excitement, or dopamine release so they are always searching for more.
No doubt there is an element of extreme overconfidence and courage that may have led the passengers to take up this journey believing that such a complex project which is run by rich and smart people is “too big to fail”.
On the other hand, the news of over 700 refugees drowning in the ocean at the same time failed to grape the same level of attention from the public.
While some people believed it’s because of the media and public being more biased against the ‘white people’ who drowned after paying for the journey the situation is more complex than that and voyeurism may not explain this bias of showing empathy to the rich and famous.
Overall there is an element of using our obsession with current news as a way of escaping our daily struggles, believing that others are worse off than us, and muttering that too much money would not buy you happiness and may in fact kill you if you misuse it.
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