Disbelief or minimization in response to threat warnings
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.
^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.
^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 ...
^Inglis-Arkell, Esther (May 2, 2013). "The frozen calm of normalcy bias". Gizmodo. Retrieved 23 May 2017. Cites:
Omer, Haim; Alon, Nahman (1994). "The continuity principle: A unified approach to disaster and trauma". American Journal of Community Psychology. 22 (2): 273–287. doi:10.1007/BF02506866. PMID 7977181. S2CID 21140114.
Matsuda, Iware (1993). "Loss of human lives induced by the Cyclone of 29–30 April, 1991 in Bangladesh". GeoJournal. 31 (4): 319–325. doi:10.1007/BF00812781. S2CID 189879939.
Horlick-Jones, T.; Amendola, A.; Casale, R. (1995). Natural Risk and Civil Protection. ISBN 9780419199700.
Ripley, Amanda (2 May 2005). "How to Get Out Alive". TIME Magazine. 165 (18): 58–62. PMID 16128022.
^Ince, Wyne (October 23, 2017). Thoughts of Life and Time. Wyne Ince. p. 122. ISBN 978-1-973727-15-6. Retrieved 20 December 2017.
^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.
^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)
^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
Normalcybias, or normality bias, is a cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings. Consequently, individuals underestimate...
perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it. Normalcybias, a form of cognitive dissonance, is the refusal to plan for, or react...
superiority – Overestimating one's abilities and qualifications; a cognitive biasNormalcybias – Disbelief or minimization in response to threat warnings Nothing...
Bias is a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is inaccurate, closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair....
breaking point until it is too late to take action. In over-optimism and normalcybias, people believe that disasters will happen elsewhere, and even if they...
natural or scientific laws Normal Accidents – 1984 book by Charles Perrow Normalcybias – Disbelief or minimization in response to threat warnings Outside Context...
In statistics, the bias of an estimator (or bias function) is the difference between this estimator's expected value and the true value of the parameter...
Length time bias (or length bias) is an overestimation of survival duration due to the relative excess of cases detected that are asymptomatically slowly...
normalcy, and the host of social inferences and interpersonal responses that accompany such estimates, are systematically and egocentrically biased in...
psychology, the false consensus effect, also known as consensus bias, is a pervasive cognitive bias that causes people to "see their own behavioral choices and...
many psychological biases that may trigger a recession including the availability heuristic, the money illusion, and normalcybias. Excessive levels of...
on 13 October 2010 Glenn Beck (host) (6 April 2011). "Breaking the NormalcyBias". The Glenn Beck Program. New York, United States. Fox News. Retrieved...
Political bias is a bias or perceived bias involving the slanting or altering of information to make a political position or political candidate seem more...
Interactive Normality bias, a belief people hold when considering the possibility of a disaster Normal (disambiguation) Return to normalcy, a campaign slogan...
Social stigma of obesity is broadly defined as bias or discriminatory behaviors targeted at overweight and obese individuals because of their weight and...
The illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) is cognitive bias or an illusion where people tend to believe they understand a topic better than they actually...
An empathy gap, sometimes referred to as an empathy bias, is a breakdown or reduction in empathy (the ability to recognize, understand, and share another's...
Allegiance bias (or allegiance effect) in behavioral sciences is a bias resulted from the investigator's or researcher's allegiance to a specific school...
as the number of people in need of aid increase. As a type of cognitive bias, it has a significant effect on the prosocial behaviour from which helping...
bring the situation under control. It was reported that towns returned to "normalcy" the following day. Following the incident, the Indian government formed...
traits masked by superficial charm, and the outward appearance of apparent normalcy. Hervey M. Cleckley, an American psychiatrist, influenced the initial diagnostic...
various types of comparison. The Dunning–Kruger effect refers to a cognitive bias, whereby people whose ability at a task is in fact low or average overestimate...
Global Information