Multiple hazards and risk perceptions over time: the availability heuristic in Italy and Sweden under COVID-19

The severe impact of global crises, such as COVID-19 and climate change, is plausibly reshaping the way in which people perceive risks. In this paper, we examine and compare how global crises and local disasters influence public perceptions of multiple hazards in Italy and Sweden. To this end, we integrate information about the occurrence of hazardous events with the results of two nationwide surveys. These included more than 4000 participants and were conducted in two different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic corresponding to low (August 2020) and high (November 2020) levels of infection rates. We found that, in both countries, people are more worried about risks related to experienced events. This is in line with the cognitive process known as the availability heuristic: individuals assess the risk associated with a given hazard based on how easily it comes to their mind. Epidemics, for example, are perceived as less likely and more impactful in Italy compared to Sweden. This outcome can be explained by cross-country differences in the impact of, as well as governmental responses to, COVID-19. Notwithstanding the ongoing pandemic, people in both Italy and Sweden are highly concerned about climate change, and they rank it as the most likely threat.

How Do Cognitive Biases Influence Reasoning?

Individuals like to think of themselves as rational actors, careful and considered in their thinking and capable of sound and reliable judgments. Yet people often engage in automatic, reflexive thinking. It takes effort to turn on the reflective, deliberative mind; and humans are basically cognitive misers. In Chapter 4, “How Do Cognitive Biases Influence Reasoning?,” the authors explain how particular cognitive biases such as confirmation bias, the availability heuristic, illusions of understanding, and the appeal of intuitive theories, influence reasoning about scientific issues. They explain how difficult it is to stay open to new perspectives and to fairly evaluate information that challenges what one thinks one knows—or wants to believe is true. They offer suggestions for what individuals and educators can do to engage in and promote the effortful work of reflective thinking and how to check one’s own biases when interpreting complex scientific topics.

Multiple hazards and risk perceptions over time: The availability heuristic in Italy and Sweden under COVID-19

The severe impact of global crises, such as COVID-19 and climate change, is plausibly reshaping the way in which people perceive risks. In this paper, we examine and compare how global crises and local disasters influence public perceptions of multiple hazards in Italy and Sweden. To this end, we integrate information about the occurrence of hazardous events with the results of two nationwide surveys. These included more than 4,000 participants and were conducted in two different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic corresponding to low (August 2020) and high (November 2020) levels of infection rates. We found that, in both countries, people are more worried about risks related to experienced events. This is in line with the cognitive process known as availability heuristic: individuals assess the risk associated with a given hazard based on how easily it comes to their mind. Epidemics, for example, are perceived as less likely and more impactful in Italy compared to Sweden. This outcome can be explained by cross-country differences in the impact of, and governmental responses to, COVID-19. Notwithstanding the ongoing pandemic, people in both Italy and Sweden are highly concerned about climate change and they rank it as the most likely threat.

"You have the right to remain silent, so why are you talking?" : interrogation rights, decision making, and the availability heuristic

A police interrogation is one mechanism by which a false confession is sometimes obtained, which in turn can lead to a wrongful conviction. Given the severity of this consequence, rights for criminal suspects have been developed to protect the innocent. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of these rights has been called into question, as there is evidence that most people do not fully understand their rights, and the rate at which people choose to waive their rights is extremely high. The current study examined factors relating to people's interpretation of their rights when asked to speak with police. It was found that participants retained their rights at higher rates than expected. In addition, the results indicate that it is possible to affect waiver rates by manipulating the availability of information relating to negative or positive interrogation outcomes. This could have practical implications for how criminal suspects' rights are administered.

"You have the right to remain silent, so why are you talking?" : interrogation rights, decision making, and the availability heuristic

A police interrogation is one mechanism by which a false confession is sometimes obtained, which in turn can lead to a wrongful conviction. Given the severity of this consequence, rights for criminal suspects have been developed to protect the innocent. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of these rights has been called into question, as there is evidence that most people do not fully understand their rights, and the rate at which people choose to waive their rights is extremely high. The current study examined factors relating to people's interpretation of their rights when asked to speak with police. It was found that participants retained their rights at higher rates than expected. In addition, the results indicate that it is possible to affect waiver rates by manipulating the availability of information relating to negative or positive interrogation outcomes. This could have practical implications for how criminal suspects' rights are administered.

Environmentally Motivated Travel Reduction: The Effects of Availability, Herding Bias, and Self-Monitoring

Asking consumers to consume less, or to travel less, does not necessarily make them do so and is, therefore, a key challenge for public policy-makers and green marketers. In this paper, we scrutinize the effect of intuitive decisions/judgments as well as personality differences on consumers’ intentions to consume less. More specifically, we study how the availability heuristic, herding biases, and self-monitoring influence environmentally motivated consumption reduction (EMCR) in a tourism context. Drawing on EMCR and a heuristics-and-biases approach, we present an experimental study designed to test how availability (high vs. low information availability), herding behavior (herd present vs. no herd), and high vs. low self-monitoring influence consumers’ intentions to travel less in the future. The results suggest that the existence of a herd influence environmentally motivated travel reductions. Also, high self-monitors are more capable of sensing the eco-friendly direction of the public opinion in general, and adjust their behavior to align with this, than individuals with a lower self-monitoring tendency. Finally, there is a positive interaction between herding bias and self-monitoring, while we found no significant effect of the availability heuristic on the environmentally motivated travel reduction. The implications of the results and future research avenues are discussed.