Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a
cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings. Consequently, individuals underestimate the likelihood of a disaster, when it might affect them, and its potential adverse effects. The normalcy bias causes many people to not adequately prepare for natural disasters, market crashes, and calamities caused by
human error
Human error refers to something having been done that was " not intended by the actor; not desired by a set of rules or an external observer; or that led the task or system outside its acceptable limits".Senders, J.W. and Moray, N.P. (1991) Human ...
. About 70% of people reportedly display normalcy bias during a disaster.
[ Cites:]
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The normalcy bias can manifest in response to warnings about disasters and actual catastrophes. Such disasters include
market crashes, motor vehicle accidents, natural disasters like a
tsunami
A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater exp ...
, and war.
Normalcy bias has also been called ''analysis paralysis'', ''the ostrich effect'',
and by
first responders, ''the negative panic''.
The opposite of normalcy bias is overreaction, or worst-case scenario bias,
[Schneier, Bruce]
"Worst-case thinking makes us nuts, not safe"
CNN, May 12, 2010 (retrieved April 18, 2014); reprinted i
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; in which small deviations from normality are dealt with as signals of an impending catastrophe.
Phases
Amanda Ripley, author of ''The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why'', identifies common response patterns of people in disasters and explains that there are three phases of response: "denial, deliberation, and the decisive moment". With regard to the first phase, described as "denial", Ripley found that people were likely to deny that a disaster was happening. It takes time for the brain to process information and recognize that a disaster is a threat. In the "deliberation" phase, people have to decide what to do. If a person does not have a plan in place, this causes a serious problem because the effects of life-threatening stress on the body (e.g. tunnel vision, audio exclusion, time dilations,
out-of-body experience
An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although this term is more commonly us ...
s, or reduced motor skills) limit an individual's ability to perceive information and make plans. Ripley asserts that in the third and final phase, described as the "decisive moment", a person must act quickly and decisively. Failure to do so can result in injury or death. She explains that the faster someone can get through the denial and deliberation phases, the quicker they will reach the decisive moment and begin to take action.
Examples
![Crushed Saturn](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Crushed_Saturn.jpg)
Journalist David McRaney wrote that "Normalcy bias flows into the brain no matter the scale of the problem. It will appear whether you have days and plenty of warning or are blindsided with only seconds between life and death."
It can manifest itself in phenomena such as car crashes. Car crashes occur very frequently, but the average individual experiences them only rarely, if ever. It also manifests itself in connection with events in world history. According to a 2001 study by sociologist Thomas Drabek, when people are asked to leave in anticipation of a disaster, most check with four or more sources of information before deciding what to do. The process of checking in, known as milling, is common in disasters.
![Mt Vesuvius Erupting](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Mt_Vesuvius_Erupting.jpg)
As for events in world history, the normalcy bias can explain why, when the volcano
Vesuvius
Mount Vesuvius ( ; it, Vesuvio ; nap, 'O Vesuvio , also or ; la, Vesuvius , also , or ) is a somma- stratovolcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, about east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. It is one of ...
erupted, the residents of
Pompeii watched for hours without evacuating.
It can explain why thousands of people refused to leave New Orleans as
Hurricane Katrina approached
and why at least 70% of
9/11 survivors spoke with others before leaving.
Officials at the
White Star Line
The White Star Line was a British shipping company. Founded out of the remains of a defunct packet company, it gradually rose up to become one of the most prominent shipping lines in the world, providing passenger and cargo services between t ...
made insufficient preparations to evacuate passengers on the ''
Titanic
RMS ''Titanic'' was a British passenger liner, operated by the White Star Line, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, Unit ...
'' and people refused evacuation orders, possibly because they underestimated the odds of a worst-case scenario and minimized its potential impact.
Similarly, experts connected with the
Fukushima nuclear power plant were strongly convinced that a multiple reactor meltdown could never occur.
![Fukushima I by Digital Globe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Fukushima_I_by_Digital_Globe.jpg)
A website for police officers has noted that members of that profession have "all seen videos of officers who were injured or killed while dealing with an ambiguous situation, like the old one of a father with his young daughter on a traffic stop". In the video referred to, "the officer misses multiple threat cues...because the assailant talks lovingly about his daughter and jokes about how packed his minivan is. The officer only seems to react to the positive interactions, while seeming to ignore the negative signals. It's almost as if the officer is thinking, 'Well I've never been brutally assaulted before so it certainly won't happen now.' No one is surprised at the end of the video when the officer is violently attacked, unable to put up an effective defense." This professional failure, notes the website, is a consequence of normalcy bias.
Normalcy bias, David McRaney has written, "is often factored into fatality predictions in everything from ship sinkings to stadium evacuations". Disaster movies, he adds, "get it all wrong. When you and others are warned of danger, you don't evacuate immediately while screaming and flailing your arms." McRaney notes that in the book ''Big Weather'',
tornado chaser Mark Svenvold discusses "how contagious normalcy bias can be. He recalled how people often tried to convince him to chill out while fleeing from impending doom. Even when tornado warnings were issued, people assumed it was someone else's problem. Stake-holding peers, he said, would try to shame him into denial so they could remain calm. They didn't want him deflating their attempts at feeling normal".
People who promote conspiracy theories or apocalyptic future scenarios have cited the normalcy bias as a prime reason why others scoff at their pronouncements. For example, survivalists who fear that the U.S. will soon descend into
totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regu ...
cite normalcy bias as the reason why most Americans do not share their worries. Similarly, fundamentalist Christians use the normalcy bias to explain why others scoff at their beliefs about the "
End Time
The end time (also called end times, end of time, end of days, last days, final days, doomsday, or eschaton) refers to:
* Eschatology in various religions—beliefs concerning the final events of history or the destiny of humanity
End Time, En ...
". One fundamentalist website writes: "May we not get blinded by the 'normalcy bias' but rather live with the knowledge that the Lord’s coming is near."
Hypothesized cause
The normalcy bias may be caused in part by the way the brain processes new data. Research suggests that even when the brain is calm, it takes 8–10 seconds to process new information. Stress slows the process, and when the brain cannot find an acceptable response to a situation, it fixates on a single and sometimes default solution that may or may not be correct. An evolutionary reason for this response could be that paralysis gives an animal a better chance of surviving an attack and predators are less likely to see prey that is not moving.
Effects
About 70% of people reportedly display normalcy bias in disasters.
Normalcy bias has been described as "one of the most dangerous biases we have". The lack of preparation for disasters often leads to inadequate shelter, supplies, and evacuation plans. Even when all these things are in place, individuals with a normalcy bias often refuse to leave their homes.
Normalcy bias can cause people to drastically underestimate the effects of the disaster. Therefore, people think that they will be safe even though information from the radio, television, or neighbors gives them reasons to believe there is a risk. The normalcy bias causes a
cognitive dissonance
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environmen ...
that people then must work to eliminate. Some manage to eliminate it by refusing to believe new warnings coming in and refusing to evacuate (maintaining the normalcy bias), while others eliminate the dissonance by escaping the danger. The possibility that some people may refuse to evacuate causes significant problems in disaster planning.
Prevention
The negative effects of normalcy bias can be combated through the four stages of disaster response:
* ''preparation'', including publicly acknowledging the possibility of disaster and forming contingency plans.
* ''warning'', including issuing clear, unambiguous, and frequent warnings and helping the public to understand and believe them.
* ''impact'', the stage at which the contingency plans take effect and emergency services, rescue teams, and disaster relief teams work in tandem.
* ''aftermath'', reestablishing equilibrium after the fact, by providing both supplies and aid to those in need.
Overreaction
The opposite of normalcy bias is overreaction bias. Noting the effect
regression to the mean
In statistics, regression toward the mean (also called reversion to the mean, and reversion to mediocrity) is the fact that if one sample of a random variable is extreme, the next sampling of the same random variable is likely to be closer to it ...
, most deviations from normalcy do not lead to catastrophe, despite regular predictions of doomsday. Both underreaction (normalcy bias) and overreaction (worst-case thinking) are cognitive flaws and may extend to patterns of
cognitive distortion
A cognitive distortion is an exaggerated or irrational thought pattern involved in the onset or perpetuation of psychopathological states, such as depression and anxiety.
Cognitive distortions are thoughts that cause individuals to perceive rea ...
s.
See also
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Black swan theory
The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based o ...
*
Bystander effect
The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological theory that states that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when there are other people present. First proposed in 1964, much research, mostly in the lab, has ...
*
Cassandra (metaphor)
The Cassandra metaphor (variously labeled the Cassandra "syndrome", "complex", "phenomenon", "predicament", "dilemma", "curse") relates to a person whose valid warnings or concerns are disbelieved by others.
The term originates in Greek mytholo ...
*
Disaster planning
Emergency management or disaster management is the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters. Emergency management, despite its name, does not actuall ...
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Disaster relief
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Normalization (sociology)
Normalization refers to social processes through which ideas and actions come to be seen as ' normal' and become taken-for-granted or 'natural' in everyday life. There are different behavioral attitudes that humans accept as normal, such as grie ...
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Optimism bias
Optimism bias (or the optimistic bias) is a cognitive bias that causes someone to believe that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event. It is also known as unrealistic optimism or comparative optimism.
Optimism bias is commo ...
*
Somebody else's problem
References
{{Biases
Cognitive biases
Disaster preparedness
Emergency management