People lack a realistic awareness of the possibility of their own death. In one survey, students were given actuarial tables on life expectancies and asked to estimate how long they expected to live. Students generally estimated they would live 10 to 20 years longer than their projected ages. When asked to explain why, the most typical remarks were, ”It will not happen to me.” ”I am not like other people,” “I am unique”.
Actually, there is considerable misunderstanding about the actual risk of death among many people. According to one study, people greatly overestimate the frequency of death from sensational causes such as accidents and homicides, and underestimate the frequency of deaths from non spectacular causes that claim one victim at a time, such as diabetes and strokes. Such misjudgment has to do partly with the tendency to judge an event as likely or frequent if instances are easy to imagine or recall, which is further compounded by the biases of the mass media.
For example, even though newspapers carry about three times as many articles about homicide as death from diseases, the latter take about one hundred times as many lives as homicide. People also tend to underestimate the risk of death when dealing with familiar hazards under their control, such as motor vehicles, smoking, and X-rays. They are also unrealistically optimistic about their chances of surviving a crisis such as a heart attack. In short, there is a marked discrepancy between our awareness of the risk of death and the actual risk of death from a given cause or event.
Actually, there is considerable misunderstanding about the actual risk of death among many people. According to one study, people greatly overestimate the frequency of death from sensational causes such as accidents and homicides, and underestimate the frequency of deaths from non spectacular causes that claim one victim at a time, such as diabetes and strokes. Such misjudgment has to do partly with the tendency to judge an event as likely or frequent if instances are easy to imagine or recall, which is further compounded by the biases of the mass media.
For example, even though newspapers carry about three times as many articles about homicide as death from diseases, the latter take about one hundred times as many lives as homicide. People also tend to underestimate the risk of death when dealing with familiar hazards under their control, such as motor vehicles, smoking, and X-rays. They are also unrealistically optimistic about their chances of surviving a crisis such as a heart attack. In short, there is a marked discrepancy between our awareness of the risk of death and the actual risk of death from a given cause or event.
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