Driven by distraction

Ross Gittins comments in today's Herald about human tendencies "to overestimate small risks while underestimating big risks". He puts this in the context of the politicization (is that a word? - you know what I mean) of terror. He says,

"FORGIVE me if I'm not shaking in my shoes over the risk of terrorism on our shores. There is a risk, of course, but it's being greatly exaggerated. My scepticism comes after 30 years in journalism, watching such scares from close quarters.

In that time I've learnt three things: how easy it is to scare the pants off a public looking for bad news stories to spice up humdrum lives; how many interest groups stand to benefit by manipulating the public's emotions; and how much more we'd be able to do to reduce risks to life and limb if only we'd assess those risks in a more cool-headed way.

The risk of being killed in a terrorist attack is very much lower than the risk of being killed on the road. Yet after the attacks of September 2001 in America, many people switched from travelling by air to travelling by road, presuming it to be safer. A study by economists at Cornell University estimated that this switch led to an increase of 240 driving deaths a month during the rest of 2001.

While all this was going on, was the Bush Administration out there warning people not to be so silly? No, it was busy ramping up the security checks at airports, thus adding to people's reasons to avoid flying. Like any Australian government would have, it put being seen to be responding to the public's fear of terrorism ahead of minimising the public's loss of life.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention says the odds of an American dying in a terrorist attack are about one in 88,000. The odds of dying by falling off a ladder are one in 10,000.

In the welter of stories about terrorism in recent days, I've been surprised how few commentators have noted the obvious: many groups have an interest in exaggerating the threat of terrorism. Starting with governments, our long-known tendency to unite against an external threat has made terrorism a windfall gain. Most haven't resisted the temptation to play up the threat rather than calm us down.

Modern politicians are so focused on public perceptions, and the need to use the media to manage those perceptions, that they are more concerned with being seen to respond to the public's media-incited worries than with fixing the problem. Hence the continuing stream of legislation to give the police and security agencies the powers they need to protect us. We had various law changes after September 11, then after the Bali bombings and now after the London bombings.

It's all great for showing governments as being on the job, sparing no effort in protecting us. But the question no one dares to ask is why it has taken the pollies so many goes to get it right. And is this it, or will there be more fiddling down the track?

Another motive is for governments to establish an alibi. The next time you hear a minister sorrowfully opining that a terrorism attack in Australia is inevitable - not if, but when - remember, they're not just warming over our fears, they're getting their defence ready should an attack happen. "Well, of course we did our best, but everyone knew it had to happen one day." So the fact Liberal and Labor governments agree on the need for further draconian legislation is no guarantee there really is a need. So much emotion has been whipped up over terrorism that oppositions are afraid to oppose. They live in fear of recriminations should the unlikely happen.

Leaving aside the people whose civil liberties are trampled, these mutually enjoyable terror games would be harmless if time and money grew on trees. Since they don't, we'd probably save more lives by putting the same effort into fixing black spots on the Pacific Highway. Or think on this: buried by last week's avalanche about terrorism was the news that suicide is the leading cause of death among 10- to 14-year-olds in Queensland. Presuming that problem isn't unique to Queensland, might it not deserve a bit more of our attention?"

Gittins' reference to the psychological barriers to risk assessment and the need "to assess those risks in a more cool-headed way" tweaked with something I had just read in John Mauldin's Outside the Box. He was also discussing psychological barriers, in this instance, barriers to properly analyse and assess.

Mauldin presented studies which showed that people tend to get things a might confused when they are distracted. This takes on relevance to our circumstances because Howard is throwing terror laws with his left hand, but leading with a strong industrial relations revolution punch from his right hand. Each of these major issues is a distraction to the other. Mauldin's report showed how distraction makes us believe in weak arguments and even see known false arguments as true when we get distracted.

"When the message was weak, people who were highly distracted showed much more agreement with the message than did the people who only suffered mild distraction. When the message was strong and distraction was high, the students showed less agreement than when the message was strong and the distraction was low. Distraction did exactly what it was meant to do... prevented people from concentrating on the important issue. Petty et al conclude "Distraction, then, is an especially useful technique when a person's arguments are poor because even though people might be aware that some arguments were presented, they might be unaware that the arguments were not very compelling."

In another study, subjects were given statements to read. They were told that the statement contained some falsehoods, but to make it easy on them, all false statements were printed in red type while all true statments were printed in black type. The experiment was rigged so that some of the subjects got distracted and interrupted while they were reading the statements. Now, remember: the subjects were told the false statements were flagged with red type. The results were that the subjects who were interrupted were only half as good as interpreting the false statements as false as compared to those who were not interrupted; distraction led them to act as though they believed false statements to be true even though the false statements were flagged to be false. Moreover, the interrupted subjects were twice as likely to interpret a true statement to be false! And this, again, when the truth and falseness of the statements were as clear as black and red.