Anthony Elliott's Algorithms of Anxiety and the Anxiety Facet (N1)

Anthony Elliott is a sociologist, and Algorithms of Anxiety is his argument that the digital age has built a whole machinery for managing fear, one that quietly trains us to hand our choices over to apps and automation. His claim is that the modern response to anxiety is to outsource it. In the APA blog he writes, "Today, people are tormented by no greater anxiety than to find (and swiftly) apps, algorithms and other kinds of digital automation to which they can 'outsource' that capacity for decision-making and freedom." The worry the digital world plays on is, in the Big Five, one facet.

The worry the digital world plays on is the Anxiety facet

That facet is Anxiety (N1), under Neuroticism, how much your mind anticipates that something could go wrong and reaches for a way to feel safe. Elliott's interest is less individual pathology than how the culture meets that universal pull, offering an algorithm for every uncertainty, from which route to drive to whom to date. For a high-N1 reader the appeal is obvious, since the app promises to lift the weight of the choice. The catch he names is that outsourcing the decision also outsources a piece of your freedom, and the anxiety tends to return anyway.

The book reads differently depending on where you sit on the trait. The tool that soothes one person's worry can dull another's judgment, and Elliott's concern is the slow trade of deliberation (C6), the human work of weighing a choice, for the frictionless answer the algorithm hands you. A lower-N1 reader may barely feel the pull he describes, while a high-N1 reader may recognize the relief of letting the phone decide. Naming the pattern is the first step to keeping the tools without letting them quietly run the choices that are yours to make.

For a reader placing themselves, your N1 is a fair read on how much low-grade worry hums under your day and how tempting it is to hand hard choices to something else. High on it and Algorithms of Anxiety is a sharp look at why the digital fixes feel so good and cost more than they seem. Low on it and the book explains the restlessness driving a lot of modern habits. Where you sit on Anxiety tells you how loud your baseline runs, and we take the facet apart in Anxiety (N1).

Read the book: Algorithms of Anxiety: Fear in the Digital Age by Anthony Elliott.

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