Inside the Mind of Worry: Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts

[HuckleB]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/opinion/sunday/why-smart-brains-make-dumb-decisions-about-danger.html?src=rechp

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Researchers in neuroscience, psychology, economics and other disciplines have made a range of discoveries about why human beings sometimes fear more than the evidence warrants, and sometimes less than the evidence warns. That science is worth reviewing at length. But one current issue offers a crash course in the most significant of these findings: the fear of vaccines, particularly vaccines for children.

In a 2011 Thomson Reuters/NPR poll, nearly one parent in three with a child under 18 was worried about vaccines, and roughly one American in four was concerned about the value and safety of vaccines in general. In the same poll, roughly one out of every five college-educated respondents worried that childhood vaccination was connected with autism; 7 percent said they feared a link with Type 1 diabetes.

Based on the evidence, these and most other concerns about vaccines are unfounded. A comprehensive report last year from the Institute of Medicine is just one of many studies to report that vaccines do not cause autism, diabetes, asthma or other major afflictions listed by the anti-vaccination movement.

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In this remarkable era of discovery about how our brains operate, we have discovered a great deal about why the gap occurs, and we can — and should — put our detailed knowledge of risk perception to use in narrowing the risk-perception gap and reducing its dangers. As the Italian philosopher Nicola Abbagnano advised, “Reason itself is fallible, and this fallibility must find a place in our logic.” Accepting that risk perception is not so much a process of pure reason, but rather a subjective combination of the facts and how those facts feel, might be just the step in the human learning curve we need to make. Then, maybe, we’ll start making smarter decisions about vaccines and other health matters."

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A gentle read about fear.

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[HuckleB]

2. Thanks.

[xchrom]

3. ...