"FUD", for short.

The term "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt"  was apparently coined by GeneAmdahl who supposedly used it when describing a tactic used by the InternationalBusinessMachines salesforce to cause potential customers of Gene's new company, AmdahlCorporation, to think again about buying products from any company but IBM.

More generally:  1. The tendency of human beings to let negative emotions such as '''fear''', '''uncertainty''', and '''doubt''' constrain their choices and decisions, which might otherwise be based on a more rational or pragmatic basis.  2.  A marketing strategy to get consumers to choose a particular brand (or, more often, pass up a competing brand), or purchase a good or service they might not actually need, using the emotional factors discussed in definition 1.

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Today it is often applied to MicroSoft (especially with regard to their recent comments about OpenSource being akin to cancer).  ''MicroSoft has been using FUD successfully for at least ~10 years ago, e.g. DR-DOS and Windows compatibility.''

Thirty years ago no-one ever got sacked for buying IBM. Today, substitute Microsoft. Tomorrow: who knows?

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"FUD" can be an effective tactic a "market leader" can use to discourage customers from going to the competitors:
The more fear, uncertainty or doubt a person has, the more likely they'll want to "go with the safe bet" -- the market leader.

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ProfessionalPerfectionism is a different, but possibly related concept.

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The human trait that empowers FearUncertaintyAndDoubt is the probably the same one that empowers AdVerecundiam and QuotingNotThinking.
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See also WarmFuzzyFeeling
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CategoryJargon CategoryHistory