Vanishing into thin air

(Hudson River crash*)

(crash near Talodi; no survivors*)

(crash in Everest region; ~19 killed*)

 

At one time or another most people have heard stories of and seen images of plane crashes, which can contribute to a fear of flying.  Specifically, it’s possible that when people think of flying, these horror stories and horrific images of plane crashes readily come to mind, confirming their belief that they should fear being on an airplane.  As a result of this confirmation, they might avoid flying or might be very apprehensive while flying because they believe that at any moment it is very possible that their plane will crash.  

People are illustrating a cognitive heuristic when their fear of flying in airplanes is rooted in the stories they hear about plane crashes.  In general, cognitive heuristics are rules of thumb that allow us to make quick but reasonable decisions and are our way of trying to balance accuracy and efficiently with the limited cognitive resources we have (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). The “fear of plane crashes” is an example of a specific cognitive heuristic known as the availability heuristic.  According to the availability heuristic, people estimate the probability of an event occurring based on how readily examples come to mind (MacLeod & Campbell, 1992).  Therefore, it seems logical that people would naturally believe that any airplane had a high probability of crashing because of the media attention given to such stories.

I have not fallen prey to the availability heuristic about the safeness of planes; however, the availability heuristic still impacts my life in other ways. The example that readily comes to mind is my mom’s reaction to my desire to study abroad. Once I started high school, I knew without a doubt I wanted to study abroad while in college.  Whenever I would express this desire to or around my mom, she would throw a fit and list all the reasons that I shouldn’t go. I realize that most mothers want to protect their children, but this realization did not stop me from being frustrated with her whenever we had a conversation about studying aboard.  I would get frustrated because her main reason for not wanting me to go was that something bad could happen to me, like getting kidnapped or killed.  Every time she would mention these reasons, I would tell her that there are probably thousands of other people who go abroad and have a perfectly normal time (i.e., they don’t get killed or sold into human trafficking). Despite my counter arguments, my mom did not deter from her opinion a back then or even a few months ago when I was truly considering studying abroad with a close friend.

By only focusing on the likelihood of me not returning home (which would be the case if I was kidnapped and killed), my mom was using the availability heuristic. My mom regularly watches the news and listens to the radio talk shows, so naturally she was bombarded with Natalie Holloway’s story numerous times in 2005. For those of who do not know, Natalie Holloway vanished during a senior high school trip to Aruba; she was officially declared dead in January 2012.  In 2009, her story was made into a Lifetime Movie, and in 2011 there was a sequel that depicting the court proceedings of the man accused of murdering her.  With the amount of media attention focused on this story, it is not too surprising that my mom quickly had red flags waving in the air when I shared my desire to studying abroad.  For my mom, studying abroad or simply going out of the country as a young woman was equated with disappearing in that foreign country to never be seen again because she was able to readily recall Natalie’s story as well as other vanishing sorties that were mentioned when discussing Natalie’s case for 5 ½ years.

It is now safe to say that I will not be studying abroad anytime soon, but for medical reasons rather than my fear of vanishing into thin air.  However, my mom and I were able to come to a compromise, and she agreed to taking a summer family vacation somewhere out of the country. All I can say now is here’s hoping that she doesn’t hear any real-life Hostel stories before we are able to take our trip. 

           

(n= 712)

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MacLeod, C., & Campbell, L. (1992). Memory accessibility and probability judgments: An experimental evaluation of the availability heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 890-902.

Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and short-comings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

* All picture taken from Goggle images, plane crashes and plane crashing and burning