What is more likely to harm you McDonalds or Al-Qaida? Are you more likely to die in an airplane crash or from smoking cigarettes? Are your children more likely to die from a gun or a swimming pool?
We sort of understand that McDonalds, cigarettes and swimming pools kill more folks, yet we worry more about Al-Qaida, airplane flights, and guns. Why is this?
Our brains are unable to sort out dangers based strictly on probability. Instead, we weigh out dangers based on perception. We even refer to dangers in terms of size – it is a “big” danger. What makes a danger big?
We tend to dangers that stand out from others. McDonalds’ high-fat foods do not stand out in the environment as a source of danger in your neighborhood even though the foods they serve contribute to ours’ and our children’s health obesity-related disease. Al-Qaida stands out as a unique danger, even though they are a small group of radicals unlikely to attack your workplace we, as a nation, spend many, many billions to protect ourselves from them.
Children killed by guns or a plane crash make news while drowning or cancer are less likely to make the evening news. Certain events are large because they are so dramatic. Who can forget the drama of the twin towers burning but an equal number killed in health-related disease is almost dismissed by the general public. But the dramatic impact is not necessarily associated with their danger.
In our personal lives, we need to realize that much of the danger in our lives comes through our daily behavior not from the sources that the media trumpet.
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