Normalcy bias

Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings.[1] Consequently, individuals underestimate the likelihood of a disaster, when it might affect them, and its potential adverse effects.[2] The normalcy bias causes many people to prepare inadequately for natural disasters, market crashes, and calamities caused by human error. About 80% of people reportedly display normalcy bias during a disaster.[3]

The normalcy bias can manifest in response to warnings about disasters and actual catastrophes. Such events can range in scale from incidents such as traffic collisions to global catastrophic risk. The event may involve social constructionism phenomena such as loss of money in market crashes, or direct threats to continuity of life: as in natural disasters like a tsunami or violence in war.

Normalcy bias has also been called analysis paralysis, the ostrich effect,[4] and by first responders, the negative panic.[5] The opposite of normalcy bias is overreaction, or worst-case scenario bias,[6][7] in which small deviations from normality are dealt with as signals of an impending catastrophe.

  1. ^ Drabek, Thomas E. (1986). Human system responses to disaster : an inventory of sociological findings. New York: Springer Verlag. p. 72. ISBN 978-1-4612-4960-3. OCLC 852789578. The initial response to a disaster warning is disbelief.
  2. ^ Omer, Haim; Alon, Nahman (April 1994). "The continuity principle: A unified approach to disaster and trauma". American Journal of Community Psychology. 22 (2): 275–276. doi:10.1007/BF02506866. PMID 7977181. S2CID 21140114. ... normalcy bias consists in underestimating the probability of disaster, or the disruption involved in it ...
  3. ^ Inglis-Arkell, Esther (May 2, 2013). "The frozen calm of normalcy bias". Gizmodo. Retrieved 23 May 2017. Cites:
  4. ^ Ince, Wyne (October 23, 2017). Thoughts of Life and Time. Wyne Ince. p. 122. ISBN 978-1-973727-15-6. Retrieved 20 December 2017.
  5. ^ McRaney, David (2012). You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself. Gotham Books. p. 54. ISBN 978-1-59240-736-1. Retrieved 20 December 2017.
  6. ^ Schneier, Bruce. "Worst-case thinking makes us nuts, not safe", CNN, May 12, 2010 (retrieved April 18, 2014); reprinted in Schneier on Security, May 13, 2010 (retrieved April 18, 2014)
  7. ^ Evans, Dylan. "Nightmare Scenario: The Fallacy of Worst-Case Thinking", Risk Management, April 2, 2012 (retrieved April 18, 2014); from Risk Intelligence: How To Live With Uncertainty, by Dylan Evans, Free Press/Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2012; ISBN 9781451610901