12 Cognitive Biases

The cognitive bias I chose to explore is neglecting probability. The example given is this: people are more likely to get into a vehicle knowing the risks than going on a plane. Why? For starters. cars have been around longer than airplanes. Maybe people see them as more reliable. Also, although you can die in a car crash, in the event of an plane crash, you are more likely to not survive. I believe that people rely on comfort-ability when choosing risks. Which risk are they more comfortable taking? According to social psychologist Cass Sunstein, this cognitive bias leads us to overstate seemingly harmless activities, and causes us to overate more dangerous ones. This affects public discourse in a number of ways. One side of the argument would be of the argument would be that we live in fear of what we don't know much about, such as being in an elevator accident as opposed to falling down a flight of stairs. The probability that you will fall down a staircase is much higher than getting into an elevator caused accident. But since many of us don't know too much about how elevators operate, we choose what we do know about. The other side of the argument would be that humans should be more educated and by being knowledgeable about many things will have a great impact on how we determine the probability of something. For example, someone that knows a lot about how elevators operate and their safety features would most likely choose to ride an elevator than walk down a flight of stairs, where the risk of falling and potentially breaking your neck is a concern. Also, the experiences we face mold our brains to thinks differently than someone who has not had the same experiences. For example, when I was 17 I wrapped my car around a light pole after sliding across the freeway going 75 miles per hour. This has dramatically changed the way I think about the safety of a vehicle. I am more comfortable on an airplane than I am driving a car. Someone that has not been in a car accident would trust the safety of a vehicle, I know I did. When driving a car, you put all the trust in yourself to not crash, and many people have complete faith in themselves.When riding on an airplane, all the trust goes into another person, the pilot. Because I do not trust my own ability to drive a car without ever crashing again, I would rather put that trust into an extremely capable pilot, because I know he has been professionally trained to operate a plane. I agree with the argument that we should be more knowledgeable about things in a general sense. Education is the key to preventing ignorance. Our world would be much more tolerant than it currently is. In the case of religion, if we can educate ourselves on the different religions of the world, we can learn to accept that everyone's beliefs are different but ultimately still valid. Unfortunately, people will always stick to what they know, and continue to neglect probability.