Cry Wolf: When experience becomes
fateful.
In my previous blog,
posted simultaneously at www.mypsychologytoday.com
and at www.maximumbrainpower.com, I argued that
experience, once it leads to automatic routines, can be detrimental. The fast and efficient reactions become out
of our control and prevent us from making the necessary adjustments in slightly
altered circumstances. In this blog I
wish to discuss yet another potential danger of prior experience.
We are all familiar with
the story of the shepherd who cried wolf and subsequently paid for it
dearly. In one form or another, this
story appears in most, if not all, cultures.
The universality of this theme clearly suggests its deep rooted
wisdom. Here it is not the frequent
repetition that leads to an established routine, but rather a single, but
emotionally meaningful experience, that dramatically reduces our reaction to
similar subsequent threats. Laboratory
research suggests that a single false alarm reduces the fear reaction to the
next threat by close to fifty percent.
(Shlomo Breznitz: "Cry Wolf: The psychology of false alarms." Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1984).
The main problem seems to
be that our brains are incapable of not learning from experience. The ensuing loss of credibility that follows
a false alarm is thus practically inevitable.
Furthermore, the more frightening the initial alarm, the greater the
credibility loss following the realization that it was a false one. Needless to say, frequent exposure to threats
of hurricanes, floods, and other types of dangers, all tend to desensitize us
to future threats.
Not long ago, people knew
about an approaching hurricane when it was practically upon them. Consequently, the number of false alarms was
much smaller. These days, with
sophisticated satellite pictures, even distant, low probability events, are easily
detected and reported in the media.
However, only a very tiny number of detected hurricanes actually hit a
particular area, thus producing a large number of false alarms. The willingness of people to take
precautionary measures is much reduced by these repetitive false threats.
The ways to reduce the
negative impact of false alarms, whether in the context of natural disasters,
or in medical threats, are quite complex.
Some of them are reported in the forthcoming book by Breznitz and
Hemingway: "Maximum
brainpower: Challenging the brain for
health and wisdom". (Ballantine,
June 2012).