Probability Neglect: Emotions, Worst Cases, and Law

When strong emotions are triggered by a risk, people show a remarkable tendency to neglect a small probability that the risk will actually come to fruition.Experimental evidence, involving electric shocks and arsenic, supports this claim, as does real-world evidence, involving responses to abandoned hazardous waste dumps, the pesticide Alar, and anthrax.The resulting "probability neglect" has many implications for law and policy.It suggests the need for institutional constraints on policies based on ungrounded fears; it also shows how government might effectively draw attention to risks that warrant special concern.Probability neglect helps to explain the enactment of certain legislation, in which government, no less than ordinary people, suffers from that form of neglect.When people are neglecting the fact that the probability of harm is small, government should generally attempt to inform people, rather than cater to their excessive fear.But when information will not help, government should respond, at least if analysis suggest that the benefits outweigh the costs.The reason is that fear, even if it is excessive, is itself a significant problem, and can create additional significant problems."If someone is predisposed to be worried, degrees of unlikeliness seem to provide no comfort, unless one can prove that harm is absolutely impossible, which itself is not possible." 1"Affect-rich outcomes yield pronounced overweighting of small probabilities . . .." 2 "On Sept. 11, Americans entered a new and frightening geography, where the continents of safety and danger seemed forever shifted.Is it safe to fly?Will terrorists wage germ warfare?Where is the line between reasonable precaution and panic?Jittery, uncertain and assuming the worst, many people have answered these questions by forswearing air travel, purchasing gas masks and radiation detectors, placing frantic calls to pediatricians demanding vaccinations against exotic diseases or rushing out to fill prescriptions for Cipro, an antibiotic most experts consider an unnecessary defense against anthrax." 3