Background Recent Afrobarometer survey findings in Zimbabwe created a firestorm of reaction in the news media and on social media – a fact for which we think Zimbabweans should congratulate themselves. A willingness to confront and debate public-opinion data is a sign of democratic health (Brian Howard & Carolyn Logan) The response by the Afrobarometer (AB) to the many criticisms by Zimbabweans of the findings of Round Seven of the Afrobarometer was mostly to concentrate on defending the methodology behind the survey. Certainly for those that attended the public launch many criticisms were raised about the methods, but behind the criticism were a wide range of assertions about the accuracy of the content. Four main areas of criticism seemed to be the core:     Criticism about the sampling. These are commonly raised about AB surveys, and usually revolve around the notions that the “number of the respondents” is too small, and the choice of sites is not “representative”; Criticisms about the honesty of the respondents, mostly revolving around the “fear factor”. Here the core idea is that Zimbabweans are so fearful of possible reprisal for expressing their views, and hence suspicious of the motives behind the research, that they moderate their answers in the direction of “faking good”; Criticisms of quantitative methods as generating “shallow” data. Here there are notions that many answers to the questions should be “unpacked” in order to understand the “real meaning” of the response; Criticisms about the accuracy of the data in predicting future behaviour of citizens, with electoral choice being the most obvious concern, but there were criticisms of apparently contradictory findings such as trust in the president alongside with fear of criticising the same. Such criticisms seem to be based on a notion of people as wholly rational and not holding contradictory views, which they may well do. Most of these criticisms have been dealt with by the Afrobarometer in the response cited above. Here we wish to deal with the second set of criticisms, those dealing with the “fear factor” and the implicit understanding that apparently the critics have about the nature of the Zimbabwean citizenry. The motivation for doing so is an implicit theory that maybe the critics are what might be termed (uncharitably) “arm chair critics”. We do not dispute either the very large body of evidence that there has been sustained political violence over the past 17 years, or the legacy of Gukurahundi and the Liberation War (Sachikonye. 2011). The history of political violence over the past four decades is unchallengeable, but its consequences may be more complex in its effects on the attitudes and behaviour of Zimbabwean citizens than is frequently assumed. For example, we have recently completed an analysis of “risk aversion” in Zimbabwean citizens (Masunungure et al. 2017), and it is clear that Zimbabweans are risk averse, but also that they are changing back to the orientation of the pre-2000 era, and becoming risk taking in the majority. Here, and supporting the “fear factor”, it was evident that one event, Operation Murambatsvina, had very discernable effects on people’s agency, dramatically increasing risk aversion. 5