Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Todays phrase is Normalcy bias!

The normalcy bias refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of the government to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred that it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.

I'm so jaded it hurts.

4 comments:

  1. I enjoyed this post, maybe too much.

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  2. It's ironic that the fire alarm in my house went off as I was reading this and I reacted as if everything was normal.
    It was a false alarm of course.

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