Samuari
Twice Blessed
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2000
- Posts
- 4,072
This showed up in my email, and I thought that it deserved discussion from this bunch.
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Why do we fear the wrong things?
Why do so many smokers (whose habit shortens their lives, on
average, by about five years) fret before flying
(which averaged across people, shortens life by one day)?
Why do we fear terrorism more than accidents-which kill nearly
as many per week in just the United States as did terrorism with
its 2,527 worldwide deaths in all of the 1990s?
Why do we fear violent crime more than clogged arteries?
Psychological science has identified four influences on our
intuitions about risk.
First, we fear what our ancestral history has prepared us to
fear. Human emotions were road tested in the Stone Age.
Yesterday's risks prepare us to fear snakes, lizards, and
spiders, although all three combined now kill only a dozen
Americans a year. Flying may be far safer than biking, but our
biological past predisposes us to fear confinement and heights,
and therefore flying.
Second, we fear what we cannot control.
Skiing, by one estimate, poses 1000 times the health and injury
risk of food preservatives. Yet many people gladly assume the
risk of skiing, which they control, but avoid preservatives.
Driving we control, flying we do not. "We are loathe to let
others do unto us what we happily do to ourselves," noted risk
analyst Chauncey Starr.
Third, we fear what's immediate.
Teens are indifferent to smoking's toxicity because they live
more for the present than the distant future. Much of the
plane's threat is telescoped into the moments of takeoff and
landing, while the dangers of driving are diffused across many
moments to come, each trivially dangerous.
Fourth, we fear what's most readily available in memory.
Horrific images of a DC-10 catapulting across the Sioux City
runway or the Concorde exploding in Paris or of United Flight
175 slicing into the World Trade Center form indelible memories.
And availability in memory provides our intuitive rule-of-thumb
for judging risks.
Small wonder that most of us perceive accidents as more lethal
than strokes and homicide as more lethal than diabetes.
(In actuality, the Grim Reaper snatches twice as many lives by
stroke as by accident and four times as many by diabetes as by
homicide.)
Vivid, memorable images dominate our fears. We can know that
unprovoked great white shark attacks have claimed merely 67
lives worldwide since 1876. Yet, after watching Jaws and
reading vivid accounts of last summer's Atlantic coastal shark
attacks, we may feel chills when an underwater object brushes
our leg.
A thousand massively publicized anthrax victims would similarly
rivet our attention more than yet another 20,000+ annual
influenza fatalities or than another 30,000+ lives claimed by
guns (via suicide, homicide, and accident).
As publicized Powerball lottery winners cause us to overestimate
the infinitesimal odds of lottery success, so vivid airline
casualties cause us to overestimate the infinitesimal odds of a
lethal airline ticket.
We comprehend Maria Grasso's winning $197 million in a 1999
Powerball lottery. We don't comprehend the 328 million losing
tickets enabling her jackpot.
We comprehend the 266 passengers and crew on those four fated
flights. We don't comprehend the vast numbers of accident-free
flights-16 million consecutive fatality-free takeoffs and
landings during one stretch of the 1990s.
The result: We overvalue lottery tickets, overestimate flight
risks, and underestimate the dangers of driving.
The moral: It's perfectly normal to fear purposeful violence
from those who hate us. But with our emotions now calming a
bit, perhaps it's time to check our fears against facts.
"It's time to get back to life," said terror-victim widow Lisa
Beamer before boarding the same flight her husband had taken on
September 11.
To be prudent is to be mindful of the realities of how humans
die. By so doing, we can take away the terrorists' most
omnipresent weapon: exaggerated fear.
And when terrorists strike again, remember the odds.
If, God forbid, anthrax or truck bombs kill a thousand
Americans, we will all recoil in horror. Small comfort,
perhaps, but the odds are 284,000 to one
that you won't be among them.
BY DAVID G. MYERS
EXCERPT FROM THE AMERICAN OBSERVER
=================================
Why do we fear the wrong things?
Why do so many smokers (whose habit shortens their lives, on
average, by about five years) fret before flying
(which averaged across people, shortens life by one day)?
Why do we fear terrorism more than accidents-which kill nearly
as many per week in just the United States as did terrorism with
its 2,527 worldwide deaths in all of the 1990s?
Why do we fear violent crime more than clogged arteries?
Psychological science has identified four influences on our
intuitions about risk.
First, we fear what our ancestral history has prepared us to
fear. Human emotions were road tested in the Stone Age.
Yesterday's risks prepare us to fear snakes, lizards, and
spiders, although all three combined now kill only a dozen
Americans a year. Flying may be far safer than biking, but our
biological past predisposes us to fear confinement and heights,
and therefore flying.
Second, we fear what we cannot control.
Skiing, by one estimate, poses 1000 times the health and injury
risk of food preservatives. Yet many people gladly assume the
risk of skiing, which they control, but avoid preservatives.
Driving we control, flying we do not. "We are loathe to let
others do unto us what we happily do to ourselves," noted risk
analyst Chauncey Starr.
Third, we fear what's immediate.
Teens are indifferent to smoking's toxicity because they live
more for the present than the distant future. Much of the
plane's threat is telescoped into the moments of takeoff and
landing, while the dangers of driving are diffused across many
moments to come, each trivially dangerous.
Fourth, we fear what's most readily available in memory.
Horrific images of a DC-10 catapulting across the Sioux City
runway or the Concorde exploding in Paris or of United Flight
175 slicing into the World Trade Center form indelible memories.
And availability in memory provides our intuitive rule-of-thumb
for judging risks.
Small wonder that most of us perceive accidents as more lethal
than strokes and homicide as more lethal than diabetes.
(In actuality, the Grim Reaper snatches twice as many lives by
stroke as by accident and four times as many by diabetes as by
homicide.)
Vivid, memorable images dominate our fears. We can know that
unprovoked great white shark attacks have claimed merely 67
lives worldwide since 1876. Yet, after watching Jaws and
reading vivid accounts of last summer's Atlantic coastal shark
attacks, we may feel chills when an underwater object brushes
our leg.
A thousand massively publicized anthrax victims would similarly
rivet our attention more than yet another 20,000+ annual
influenza fatalities or than another 30,000+ lives claimed by
guns (via suicide, homicide, and accident).
As publicized Powerball lottery winners cause us to overestimate
the infinitesimal odds of lottery success, so vivid airline
casualties cause us to overestimate the infinitesimal odds of a
lethal airline ticket.
We comprehend Maria Grasso's winning $197 million in a 1999
Powerball lottery. We don't comprehend the 328 million losing
tickets enabling her jackpot.
We comprehend the 266 passengers and crew on those four fated
flights. We don't comprehend the vast numbers of accident-free
flights-16 million consecutive fatality-free takeoffs and
landings during one stretch of the 1990s.
The result: We overvalue lottery tickets, overestimate flight
risks, and underestimate the dangers of driving.
The moral: It's perfectly normal to fear purposeful violence
from those who hate us. But with our emotions now calming a
bit, perhaps it's time to check our fears against facts.
"It's time to get back to life," said terror-victim widow Lisa
Beamer before boarding the same flight her husband had taken on
September 11.
To be prudent is to be mindful of the realities of how humans
die. By so doing, we can take away the terrorists' most
omnipresent weapon: exaggerated fear.
And when terrorists strike again, remember the odds.
If, God forbid, anthrax or truck bombs kill a thousand
Americans, we will all recoil in horror. Small comfort,
perhaps, but the odds are 284,000 to one
that you won't be among them.
BY DAVID G. MYERS
EXCERPT FROM THE AMERICAN OBSERVER
