What is Normalcy Bias? Its Examples, Effects, and Causes

Have you ever come across people who are chilling out, even knowing that a devastating storm is around the corner? You must have met some crazy people living their normal routines when the alerts of hurricanes or storms are buzzing around their ears. Do you know why people react so calmly towards such catastrophic situations?

That’s because of the normalcy bias. They react with phrases like “It is not going to be that bad” or “That’s not possible, I have never witnessed that in my life before.” They show such ignorant attitudes because of the cognitive biases driving them in the form of normalcy bias.

Let’s understand deeply what normalcy bias is and its effects and causes that will help you avoid it.

What is Normalcy Bias?

It is an offshoot of cognitive bias that hinders us from understanding the possibility or the seriousness of a matter by forcing us to believe that, if you keep focusing on our goals, nothing serious will happen.

A prominent example of normalcy bias at work is to be found in the coronavirus days when people initially didn’t take it seriously and kept partying and socialising, and when things got serious, they ran toward hospitals. You can read the article “Covid-19 Pandemic from a “Normalcy Bias” Approach” by Dr. Carl Ross to better understand how normalcy bias works during pandemics.

Why does Normalcy Bias Happen?

We are humans and tend to rely more on what we have seen and experienced than on what may happen. We do so because of inductive thinking or reasoning that drives us not to consider any potential threat seriously because we have never seen or experienced it before in our lives.

Certainty in our lives and a sense of security influence our minds to ignore potential threats by marking them as, “It wouldn’t be that much bad,” or I have heard about it before, but nothing happened, so this time, nothing will happen to us again.

Normalcy bias psychology helps us act normally when something disruptive hits us by allowing us to avoid stress and anxiety.

Causes and Effects of Normalcy Bias

There can be several causes of normalcy biases, ranging from social influence to psychological effects. Let’s discuss the most prominent ones to have a clear picture of why normalcy bias happens to people and its effects on them.

You can save yourself from getting trapped in normalcy bias after becoming aware of the potential causes.

• Unshattered Trust in Our Beliefs

Our beliefs work as guiding lights in our lives. We usually accept suggestions or threats that are consistent with our beliefs and make sense of our cognitive reasoning. If we are exposed to anything new or different from our routine, our brain responds to it as alien or against our beliefs.

That’s why we tend to negate the threat instantly by marking it as irrelevant. Confirmation bias affects our decision-making process about potential threats or dangers.

• Social Influence

When we have to make decisions about anything, like whether to evacuate or not from our town due to the threat of a Tsunami, we look for cues from our surroundings, like what other people are doing in this situation. They are evacuating from their homes or not, without critically thinking about whether they should evacuate or not.

Making our decisions based on the social influence of the community in times of danger is a potential cause of normalcy bias. It has been observed that people do so because they don’t want to be considered overreacters or alarmists in case of a false threat.

• Resilient Behaviour

Human beings are born to be resilient to change and new beliefs. That’s why when someone is alarmed about potential threats like tornados, tsunamis, hurricanes, thunderstorms, etc., they act normally and optimistically towards the danger.

Humans don’t like to change their surroundings because they are too accustomed to their daily activities and normal lives. This is due to their natural instinct to resist change.

Its recent example is the surge of heatwaves in the UK. People who took the threat seriously took precautionary measures and saved themselves from getting heatstroke; on the other hand, people influenced by normalcy bias psychology were affected.

• Optimistic Approach

People get entrapped in the normalcy bias because of their optimistic behaviour towards coming threats or dangers. These people hope that everything good will happen to them and that they are not going to face anything bad despite the fact that a threat is coming their way. Being too optimistic in life can sometimes hit you badly.

For example, there’s a forecast of heavy rain in your city, and your house roof drips water when there is heavy rain. Instead of getting the roof repaired, you hope that the forecasts will be wrong, and if there is rain, my roof will not drip this time.

You are saying this knowing that if the rain comes, there will be trouble. That’s because the normalcy bias manipulates your thought process by entwining itself with an optimistic approach.

• Repeated Alarms Loses Effectiveness

Have you heard the story of the shepherd boy who repeatedly fools the villagers by alarming them that the wolf is going to attack their sheep? After a few instances, people stop paying heed to the boy and assume that he will lie whenever he utters a word.

Once, a wolf comes to attack sheep in reality, and the boy alarms the villagers, but no one listens to him because of his perception of being built as a liar. That’s the case with humans, we get alarmed repeatedly about different things, even about the minimal threats of storms.

After some time, we stopped paying heed to the threats, assuming that it was a routine matter, and we got hit by a threat suddenly. We do so because repeated alarms lose their effectiveness after some time.

Difference Between Normalcy and Optimism Bias?

Normalcy and Optimism bias, both terms are closely related to each other, because they are associated with our sense of risk perception. However, both serve different purposes but are related to each other.

Normalcy Bias Examples

There are several examples of normalcy bias happening in our lives, but we’ll limit the examples to the most common phenomena to get aware of them. Let’s explore some most common examples relevant to our daily routine.

• Ignoring Hurricane Warnings:

People ignore hurricane warnings and stay in their homes, assuming that the storm won’t be as destructive as it is presented by the threat posers. There are two reasons for their ignorance: one, they believe their area is immunised against storms, and the other, the storm will not come at all.

For these reasons, people underestimate the potential impact of the hurricane, which leads to increased risk and harm.

• Ignoring Wildfire Warnings:

People living near forests tend to ignore wildfire warnings and show reluctance to evacuate their homes. They do so because they believe it to be the kind of normal warning they receive every now and then, and nothing will happen.

Another reason for doing so is by getting influenced by normalcy bias. Most of them believe that the fire will be contained quickly and will not reach their home due to conformity bias at work.

This kind of ignorance can lead people to dangerous situations like getting stuck in the middle of a burning forest where getting aid is close to impossible.

• Building Collapse:

Have you ever wondered why people remain living in structurally damaged buildings? They choose to remain in the building, knowing that there are cracks, because of the normalcy bias psychology.

It forces people to not evacuate in time by risking their lives in the event of a building collapse.

• Pandemic Denial:

There are people out there who showed a denial attitude towards pandemics like COVID-19 and the Swine Flu of 2009. People had underestimated the severity of these fatal diseases and kept living their normal lives.

But when things got worse as predicted, a large chunk of the population was affected by it. Causing a massive death toll in human history after the Second World War.

How to Avoid Getting Trapped In Normalcy Bias?

It can be difficult to avoid getting trapped in normalcy bias in daily routine matters or rare, dangerous situations. Here are some strategies to overcome normalcy bias.

Educate Yourself: You can avoid becoming a victim of normalcy bias by educating yourself with up-to-date news and information related to potential risks.

Make a Plan: Always make a plan to execute in dangerous situations like thunderstorms by consulting experts in emergency management or public health to survive in life-threatening situations and avoid getting entrapped in the normalcy bias.

Become Resilient: Try to show resilience towards normalcy bias by adapting yourself to change in compliance with the situation. Show resilience towards the fundamentalist hidden in your personality and become proactive in acting rationally while being in alarming situations.

Conclusion

Because of the causes mentioned above, we become victims of normalcy bias, knowingly or unknowingly, in difficult situations like pandemics or threats of thunderstorms. You can read about the causes and tips mentioned above to avoid falling prey to normalcy bias while facing difficult situations.

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