Appeal to fear (argumentum ad metum/ad baculum)

Biological Parallel

Gazelles execute 'stotting'—high jumps that signal fitness to predators—but flee immediately when lions approach tall grass (ambush points). Fear responses evolved to be hair-trigger because false negatives (ignoring real danger) were fatal, while false positives (fleeing phantoms) merely wasted energy. This asymmetry makes fear-based persuasion disproportionately powerful: our threat-detection systems accept weak evidence and bypass critical analysis because, evolutionarily, paranoia was cheaper than corpses.