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Which is scarier: spiders or soda? I don’t care how many mosquitoes they eat, spiders scare the bejeezus out of me. And I’m hopelessly devoted to Coca-Cola, despite the fact it’s loaded with sugar and caffeine, which together can rot my teeth and cause stress, anxiety and depression.

Maia Szalavitz at Psychology Today looks at how humans assess risk in “10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong.” And frankly, Szalavitz says, we stink at it. For example, look at how we react to one-in-a-million catastrophes:

“After 9/11, 1.4 million people changed their holiday travel plans to avoid flying. The vast majority chose to drive instead. But driving is far more dangerous than flying, and the decision to switch caused roughly 1,000 additional auto fatalities, according to two separate analyses comparing traffic patterns in late 2001 to those the year before.”

This is a great discussion topic for your psychology class. Do they (or you) make any of these fear-based decisions? If your students can understand people’s motivation, they can better understand human behavior. That’s helpful both in psychology and in day-to-day life. -BILL FERRIS

10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong via Psychology Today

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