Without Clear Pandemic Rules, People Take On More Risks As Fear And Vigilance Wane

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Research shows that when it comes to risk assessment, people are more likely to believe something hazardous will occur when they can easily picture it: Maybe it’s already happened to them, or they’ve seen or heard about it happening to someone they know.

“For millions of years, we learned what was risky from our own personal experience,” said Gretchen Chapman, a psychologist and decision researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. “Now, we’re supposed to learn about risk by looking at public health department websites, to see how the cases are going up. Our cognitive system is just not set up to respond to that input for risks.”

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