Anecdotal Bias (Availability Heuristic)

The Pull of the Sensational

Indeed, abstract statistical information does not sway us as much as the anecdote—no matter how sophisticated the person. I will give a few instances.

The Italian Toddler

In the late 1970s, a toddler fell into a well in Italy. The rescue team could not pull him out of the hole and the child stayed at the bottom of the well, helplessly crying. Understandably, the whole of Italy was concerned with his fate; the entire country hung on the frequent news updates. The child’s cries produced acute pains of guilt in the powerless rescuers and reporters. His picture was prominently displayed on magazines and newspapers, and you could hardly walk in the center of Milan without being reminded of his plight.

Meanwhile, the civil war was raging in Lebanon, with an occasional hiatus in the conflict. While in the midst of their mess, the Lebanese were also absorbed in the fate of that child. The Italian child. Five miles away, people were dying from the war, citizens were threatened with car bombs, but the fate of the Italian child ranked high among the interests of the population in the Christian quarter of Beirut. “Look how cute that poor thing is,” I was told. And the entire town expressed relief upon his eventual rescue.

As Stalin, who knew something about the business of mortality, supposedly said, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” Statistics stay silent in us.

Terrorism kills, but the biggest killer remains the environment, responsible for close to 13 million deaths annually. But terrorism causes outrage, which makes us overestimate the likelihood of a potential terrorist attack—and react more violently to one when it happens. We feel the sting of man-made damage far more than that caused by nature.

Central Park

You are on a plane on your way to spend a long (bibulous) weekend in New York City. You are sitting next to an insurance salesman who, being a salesman, cannot stop talking. For him, not talking is the effortful activity. He tells you that his cousin (with whom he will celebrate the holidays) worked in a law office with someone whose brother-in-law’s business partner’s twin brother was mugged and killed in Central Park. Indeed, Central Park in glorious New York City. That was in 1989, if he remembers it well (the year is now 2007). The poor victim was only thirty-eight and had a wife and three children, one of whom had a birth defect and needed special care at Cornell Medical Center. Three children, one of whom needed special care, lost their father because of his foolish visit to Central Park.

Well, you are likely to avoid Central Park during your stay. You know you can get crime statistics from the Web or from any brochure, rather than anecdotal information from a verbally incontinent salesman. But you can’t help it. For a while, the name Central Park will conjure up the image of that that poor, undeserving man lying on the polluted grass. It will take a lot of statistical information to override your hesitation.

Motorcycle Riding

Likewise, the death of a relative in a motorcycle accident is far more likely to influence your attitude toward motorcycles than volumes of statistical analyses. You can effortlessly look up accident statistics on the Web, but they do not easily come to mind. Note that I ride my red Vespa around town, since no one in my immediate environment has recently suffered an accident—although I am aware of this problem in logic, I am incapable of acting on it.

Now, I do not disagree with those recommending the use of a narrative to get attention. Indeed, our consciousness may be linked to our ability to concoct some form of story about ourselves. It is just that narrative can be lethal when used in the wrong places.