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Other Biases that Affect Risk

We have other heuristics and biases about risks. One common one is called “optimism bias”: we tend to believe that we’ll do better than most others engaged in the same activity. This bias is why we think car accidents happen only to other people, and why we can at the same time engage in risky behavior while driving and yet complain about others doing the same thing. It’s why we can ignore network security risks while at the same time reading about other companies that have been breached. It’s why we think we can get by where others failed.

Basically, animals have evolved to underestimate loss. Because those who experience the loss tend not to survive, those of us remaining have an evolved experience that losses don’t happen and that it’s okay to take risks. In fact, some have theorized that people have a “risk thermostat,” and seek an optimal level of risk regardless of outside circumstances.18 By that analysis, if something comes along to reduce risk–seat belt laws, for example–people will compensate by driving more recklessly.

And it’s not just that we don’t think bad things can happen to us, we–all things being equal–believe that good outcomes are more probable than bad outcomes. This bias has been repeatedly illustrated in all sorts of experiments, but I think this one is particularly simple and elegant.19

Subjects were shown cards, one after another, with either a cartoon happy face or a cartoon frowning face. The cards were random, and the subjects simply had to guess which face was on the next card before it was turned over.

For half the subjects, the deck consisted of 70% happy faces and 30% frowning faces. Subjects faced with this deck were very accurate in guessing the face type; they were correct 68% of the time. The other half was tested with a deck consisting of 30% happy faces and 70% frowning faces. These subjects were much less accurate with their guesses, only predicting the face type 58% of the time. Subjects’ preference for happy faces reduced their accuracy.

In a more realistic experiment,20 students at Cook College were asked “Compared to other Cook students–the same sex as you–what do you think are the chances that the following events will happen to you?” They were given a list of 18 positive and 24 negative events, like getting a good job after graduation, developing a drinking problem, and so on. Overall, they considered themselves 15% more likely than others to experience positive events, and 20% less likely than others to experience negative events.

The literature also discusses a “control bias,” where people are more likely to accept risks if they feel they have some control over them. To me, this is simply a manifestation of the optimism bias, and not a separate bias.

Another bias is the “affect heuristic,” which basically says that an automatic affective valuation–I’ve seen it called “the emotional core of an attitude”–is the basis for many judgments and behaviors about it. For example, a study of people’s reactions to 37 different public causes showed a very strong correlation between 1) the importance of the issues, 2) support for political solutions, 3) the size of the donation that subjects were willing to make, and 4) the moral satisfaction associated with those donations.21 The emotional reaction was a good indicator of all of these different decisions.

With regard to security, the affect heuristic says that an overall good feeling toward a situation leads to a lower risk perception, and an overall bad feeling leads to a higher risk perception. This seems to explain why people tend to underestimate risks for actions that also have some ancillary benefit–smoking, skydiving, and such–but also has some weirder effects.

In one experiment,22 subjects were shown either a happy face, a frowning face, or a neutral face, and then a random Chinese ideograph. Subjects tended to prefer ideographs they saw after the happy face, even though the face was flashed for only ten milliseconds and they had no conscious memory of seeing it. That’s the affect heuristic in action.

Another bias is that we are especially tuned to risks involving people. Daniel Gilbert again:23
We are social mammals whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others. Understanding what others are up to–what they know and want, what they are doing and planning–has been so crucial to the survival of our species that our brains have developed an obsession with all things human. We think about people and their intentions; talk about them; look for and remember them.

In one experiment,24 subjects were presented data about different risks occurring in state parks: risks from people, like purse snatching and vandalism, and natural-world risks, like cars hitting deer on the roads. Then, the subjects were asked which risk warranted more attention from state park officials.

Rationally, the risk that causes the most harm warrants the most attention, but people uniformly rated risks from other people as more serious than risks from deer. Even if the data indicated that the risks from deer were greater than the risks from other people, the people-based risks were judged to be more serious. It wasn’t until the researchers presented the damage from deer as enormously higher than the risks from other people that subjects decided it deserved more attention.

People are also especially attuned to risks involving their children. This also makes evolutionary sense. There are basically two security strategies life forms have for propagating their genes. The first, and simplest, is to produce a lot of offspring and hope that some of them survive. Lobsters, for example, can lay 10,000 to 20,000 eggs at a time. Only ten to twenty of the hatchlings live to be four weeks old, but that’s enough. The other strategy is to produce only a few offspring, and lavish attention on them. That’s what humans do, and it’s what allows our species to take such a long time to reach maturity. (Lobsters, on the other hand, grow up quickly.) But it also means that we are particularly attuned to threats to our children, children in general, and even other small and cute creatures.25

There is a lot of research on people and their risk biases. Psychologist Paul Slovic seems to have made a career studying them.26 But most of the research is anecdotal, and sometimes the results seem to contradict each other. I would be interested in seeing not only studies about particular heuristics and when they come into play, but how people deal with instances of contradictory heuristics. Also, I would be very interested in research into how these heuristics affect behavior in the context of a strong fear reaction: basically, when these heuristics can override the amygdala and when they can’t.