The Advantages of Enemies

This makes sense to me:

According to one school of thought, this tendency to exaggerate the strength of our adversaries serves a specific psychological function. It is less scary to place all our fears on a single, strong enemy than to accept the fact our well-being is largely based on factors beyond our control. An enemy, after all, can be defined, analyzed and perhaps even defeated.

The notion that focusing our anger on a purportedly powerful foe helps mitigate our fears was first articulated by cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker in his 1969 book Angel in Armor. It has now been confirmed in a timely paper titled “An Existential Function of Enemyship,” just published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

A research team led by social psychologist Daniel Sullivan of the University of Kansas reports on four studies that suggest people are “motivated to create and/or perpetually maintain clear enemies to avoid psychological confrontations with an even more threatening chaotic environment.”