Psychologist Paul Slovic on the "Hidden Brain" Podcast

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In a recent episode of the podcast Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam interviews psychologist and Arithmetic of Compassion contributor Paul Slovic about the disconnect between our own assessments of risk and the dangers we face in our everyday lives.

Dr. Slovic, an expert on risk perception, explains to Shankar that we base our sense of danger on emotion or affect. Assessing risk through our feelings can be useful in certain contexts because it is fast and intuitive, but relying on our feelings can also create a tremendous disconnect between our assessment of a hazard’s risk and its actual danger. For instance, people tend to overestimate the risk of dying from terrorism, an emotionally salient and memorable hazard, yet people underestimate the risk of diabetes.

Shankar and Paul’s discussion covers the following topics:

  • the availability bias

  • the optimism bias

  • our inability to appreciate exponential risk

  • how our sense of control affects our perception of risk

  • the COVID-19 pandemic

  • psychic numbing

  • pseudoinefficacy

  • climate change

You can listen to the podcast on the Hidden Brain website and various podcast platforms: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/afraid-of-the-wrong-things/.

Psychic Numbing, PseudoinefficacyArithmetic of Compassion Team