page_title: Normalcy bias
section_title: Examples
hierarchical_section_title: Normalcy bias / Examples
caption_attribution_description: English: North American B-25 Mitchell bomber, flying near Mount Vesuvius during its last eruption in March 1944
context_page_description: 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, pandemics, and calamities caused by human error. About 70% of people reportedly display normalcy bias during a disaster.
  The normalcy bias can manifest in response to warnings about disasters and actual catastrophes. Such disasters include pandemics, motor vehicle accidents, natural disasters like a tsunami, 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, in which small deviations from normality are dealt with as signals of an impending catastrophe.
context_section_description: "Normalcy bias flows into the brain no matter the scale of the problem," journalist David McRaney has written. "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.
  As for events in world history, the normalcy bias explains why, when the volcano Vesuvius erupted, the residents of Pompeii watched for hours without evacuating. It explains 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 made insufficient preparations to evacuate passengers on the Titanic and people refused evacuation orders 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.
  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 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". 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."
caption: Vesuvius erupting
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