This, on the other hand, is how we can learn to be wiser and smarter people, not studying a book of fairy tales from 2000 years ago.
Originally shared by Mommy, PhD
Risk perception is one of my favorite topics. This is a great article about how our cognitive shortcuts affect our perception of risk.
“In fact, the evidence is clear that we sometimes can’t help making such mistakes. Our perceptions, of risk or anything else, are products of cognitive processes that operate outside our conscious control — running facts through the filters of our feelings and producing subjective judgments that disregard the evidence. The behavioral scientists Melissa Finucane and Paul Slovic call this the Affect Heuristic; it gives rise to what I call the risk perception gap, the dangers produced when we worry more than the evidence says we need to, or less than the evidence says we should. This is literally built in to the wiring and chemistry of the brain. Our apparent irrationality is as innate as the functioning of our DNA or our cells.”