Risk and Decision-Making

Human beings are surprisingly poor at accurately judging risk. We often worry intensely about dramatic but extremely rare dangers, such as shark attacks or plane crashes, while paying very little attention to far more common and deadly threats, such as unhealthy diets or ordinary car accidents. The level of fear that we actually feel, it turns out, does not always （ 1 ） the true level of danger that we face in our daily lives.

Psychologists have studied closely why this strange mismatch happens. One important reason is that vivid, frightening events are very easy to picture and to remember, especially when they are reported widely and repeatedly in the news. A single terrible accident can make an entire activity feel deeply dangerous, even when that activity is, statistically speaking, remarkably safe. （ 2 ）, the slow, quiet, everyday risks of ordinary life almost never make dramatic headlines, and so we tend to underestimate them badly.

This matters a great deal, because poor judgments about risk can lead directly to poor decisions, both for individuals and for whole societies. People may avoid genuinely useful medical treatments out of exaggerated fear, or carelessly ignore real dangers simply because they seem ordinary and familiar. （ 3 ） relying only on our immediate feelings, experts therefore suggest, we should learn to ask calmly how likely something really is, and to look carefully at the actual numbers as well as at the alarming headlines.