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It is important to be able to think clearly about the future. We often make big plans now that affect us for years to come. For example, when you contemplate buying a house, you are making a guess about your future income over the next 30 years. There are many positive things that can happen in your financial future. You might get a big raise, or develop a fantastic new invention that brings you fame and fortune. Of course, there are lots of negative things that can happen. You could lose your job, or get sick, or be the victim of a crime. So good long-term decision making requires you to do a reasonable job of predicting what will happen. Read More
Forecasting
I've been concerned recently about the opposite, actually - where people (particularly parents) end up worrying excessively about extremely negative but extremely unlikely events occurring.
For instance, there is a great deal of worry about pedophiles prowling the streets for children, so they may not let their children outside. Yet at the same time, they happily shuffle the children into the car to drive to an extracurricular activity. It is far more likely that they will be involved in a car accident than that their children will be kidnapped in broad daylight by a complete stranger...yet the worry is reversed.
I was wondering, Mr. Markman, what you have to say about that. Could the trend be reversed when dealing with precaution as opposed to actual estimation of likelihood? Or is it different because people are more protective of their children than of themselves? Or could the difference be the severity of the consequence (i.e. losing a job - since you can conceivably get another - as opposed to physical harm)?
Interesting question
In the case where you are worried about your children, one big difference is whether you are thinking about an event happening to you or to someone else. The same parents who worry obsessively about their children may skip their own doctor's appointments and otherwise behave as if negative things are not going to happen to them.
The severity of the possible outcome doesn't have that much of an effect on thinking about your own future. People seriously underestimate their own risk of contracting a sexually-transmitted disease or getting into an accident while driving drunk, and that affects their own behavior even when the consequences are quite severe.
Regarding pedophiles and car
Regarding pedophiles and car accidents, Art makes a good point. Though many times people take risks when playing with other people's livelihoods, e.g. subprime lenders making loans and then immediately selling them (who cares if the borrowers have track records of not paying their debts if I'm not the one holding the bag), in other instances people will do more for others - like their kids, friends, or even pets - than they would for themselves.
Another possible explanation is prospect theory and its predictions that people - from investors to heads of states to mom's driving their kids to school - often overestimate the chances of salient, negative events occurring.
One potential hole in prospect theory, though, is that control over the event in question can sometimes negatively moderate its effects.
Without knowing more about the white cars and relatives, control may be a confounding factor here too, almost a self fulfilling prophecy, i.e. since I now dislike white cars, of course I don't see myself driving one in the future, because I simply don't buy cars I dislike. Same thing goes for relatives I don't like; I choose not to work for them.
In other words, I'm no longer predicting odds; I'm making them.
Good point...
Good point. The author of the original article (Lench) is aware of the issue of control here. In that study, people's attitude toward simple objects (a bowl or a cup) were manipulated using evaluative priming, and then they were asked how likely each of a set of objects (including the target object) were to appear next in a series of images behind shown. It was clear to the participants in this study that they had no control over which image was being shown next and that the image being shown next had already been determined. Still, even for this case, people thought an event was more likely if they had been made to feel positively toward the object than if they had been made to feel negatively toward it.
Art's Article "Forcasting"
I liked his article title cause it really hits home with me. It reminded me of the movie (don't recall the title) of McCally Cauklin rattling off all the stats of probabilites of future events that could indeed go wrong based on stat facts.
That's not not why it hits home with me, being employed in the automotive industry, and coming out of a long 5 year divorced court support order, I know it will be another mind shift for me to relate to. Living single now, and really not concerned about marriage anymore, I feel it's about dogone time I start forcating my future in much more positive ways that will show happiness for me; feeling like the the guy who evacuated the woman and childern first to some sort of safety and happiness for themselves while gone down with the ship. With hope and prayers of the industry recovering for the better, I look forward for my dreams to someday come true by forcasting the positive; lived enough of the negative, and if more negative is to come for me, than I feel it's because of a higher power beyond my control.
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