{"id":645,"date":"2017-08-18T12:28:29","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T11:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/?p=645"},"modified":"2017-08-18T15:23:38","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T14:23:38","slug":"bias-regarding-fear-of-war-allowing-wars-to-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/2017\/08\/bias-regarding-fear-of-war-allowing-wars-to-happen\/","title":{"rendered":"Bias regarding fear of war allowing wars to happen"},"content":{"rendered":"

As creatures, we are very poor at assessing risk.\u00a0 This knowledge was reinforced by what I learned in the Open University module DD210 Living psychology: from the everyday to the extraordinary.\u00a0 I suspect that is one of the reasons we allow wars to happen.<\/p>\n

On the same theme The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters<\/em> by Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther may be a relevant and useful read.\u00a0 It looks as though they consider why<\/em> we allow things to happen.\u00a0 They highlight six behaviours:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Amnesia bias: only focussing on recent experience so we forget the experience of past wars.<\/li>\n
  2. Optimism bias: we are optimistic by nature and although know wars happen, believe wars will not happen to us.<\/li>\n
  3. Single action bias: it is enough to make one small act of protest thinking that will be enough to protect us.<\/li>\n
  4. Myopia: only considering the short term, that war won’t happen soon so it will never happen.<\/li>\n
  5. Inertia: it is too hard to face the problem and tackle it, when it might not even happen, thereby allowing it to happen.<\/li>\n
  6. Herding: doing what we perceive everyone else to do, which is nothing, so nobody does anything.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    But that list does not tell us what to do about them; perhaps the rest of their book does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As creatures, we are very poor at assessing risk.\u00a0 This knowledge was reinforced by what I learned in the Open University module DD210 Living psychology: from the everyday to the extraordinary.\u00a0 I suspect that is one of the reasons we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,234,185,18,235],"tags":[174,236,187,116,237],"class_list":["post-645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evidence-based-peace","category-how-wars-happen","category-psychology","category-war","category-why-wars-happen","tag-evidence-based-peace","tag-how-wars-happen","tag-psychology","tag-war","tag-why-wars-happen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":646,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions\/646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}