PSYCHOLOGY
psychology
bias
risk
media
Availability Heuristic: What You See is All There Is
We estimate the probability of an event based on how easily we can recall similar examples. Plane crashes are rare but memorable, so we fear them more than cars.
Tversky & Kahneman• 5 min read
Media Distortion
The news reports on rare, dramatic events (terrorism, shark attacks). It ignores common, boring dangers (diabetes, heart disease). Because dramatic events are "available" in our memory, we vastly overestimate their likelihood. Our mental map of risk is not based on statistics; it is based on storytelling.