The title of the infographic is, Thinking Critically About: The Fear Factor
The Learning Objective Question reads, What factors exaggerate our fear of unlikely events?
In the first panel, the text reads, Many people fear flying more than driving. However: Americans are vastly more likely to die in a vehicle accident than on a scheduled flight. (Footnote 1: National Safety Council, 2017.)
There is a timeline starting with the year 2001 at the far left, the year 2011 just past half way across, and the year 2014 three-quarters of the way across. Three illustrations accompany the timeline. The first is an airplane flying toward one of the World Trade Center buildings, the second is an ambulance, and the third is an upside down car. Arrows lead from each year point on the timeline to the next panel where the text reads, From 2011 to 2014, 63,810 people died in U.S. car or light truck accidents, and five died on scheduled airline flights.
In the second panel on the right is a graph depicting number of U.S. traffic deaths. The text on the left of the graph reads, In the three months after 9/11, fear of flying led more Americans to travel by car, and some to die. (Footnote 2: Gaissmater & Gigerenzer, 2012; Gigerenzer, 2004, 2006.) The graph’s vertical axis is labeled Number of U.S. traffic deaths, with labels starting at 2,200 and going up to 3,600. The horizontal axis lists each month of the year starting with January and ending in December. There are two lines on the graph. One line has a textbox with the text, Number of traffic deaths, 2001. This textbox points at a point on the graph that is around the 3,100 mark. The other line has as textbox with the text, Average number of traffic deaths, 1996-2000. This textbox points to a point on the graph that is around the 3,300 mark. The two lines on the graph trend closely to each other until the October to December, 2001 data points, which are circled, with a textbox with the text, October to December 2001: 353 excess deaths. Here, the lines show a marked divergence. The October to December 2001 traffic deaths are at around the 3,300 graph point, and the average number of traffic deaths from 1996 to 2000 are at around the 3,100 graph point. The circled points on the graph show the difference between the number of traffic deaths between October and December, 2001, and the average number of traffic deaths between the years 1996 and 2000. The text on the right of the graph reads, In the year following 9/11, these researchers estimated, 1500 Americans had open quotes lost their lives on the road by trying to avoid the risk of flying. Close quotes.
The next panel is titled, Why Do We Fear the Wrong Things? Under the title are numbered boxes.
Box 1 text reads, 1. We fear what our ancestral history has prepared us to fear: Snakes, lizards, and spiders combined now kill a tiny fraction of the number killed by modern-day threats, such as cars and cigarettes. Ancestral risks also prepare us to fear confinement and heights, and therefore flying. This box has three illustrations: a boy peering through his fingers at a spider, a snake, and two people sitting on an airplane.
Box 2 text reads, 2. We fear what we cannot control: Driving we control; flying we do not. Two illustrations accompany this box. One is of hands on a car steering wheel. The other is of an airplane.
Box 3 text reads, 3. We fear what is immediate: Dangers of flying are mostly in the moments of takeoff and landing. Dangers of driving are spread across many moments, each trivially dangerous.
Box 4 text reads, 4. Thanks to the availability heuristic, we fear what is most readily available in memory: Vivid images of horrific airline crashes feed our judgments of risk. People may fear sharks more than cigarettes or the effects of an unhealthy diet. (Footnote 3: Daley, 2011.)
Under this text there are two illustrations. The first one is of a shark biting the leg of a swimmer. The text reads, Shark attacks kill about one American per year. Under the illustration is the caption, Vivid image! The second illustration is of a heart with a shadow around it. The text reads, Heart disease kills 800,000 Americans per year. Under this illustration is the caption, Harder to visualize.
Still under the panel heading, Why Do We Fear the Wrong Things? is another section with the text, We remember and fear disasters (terrorism, hurricanes, and earthquakes) that kill people dramatically, in bunches. We fear too little the less dramatic and ongoing threats that claim lives one by one: A bulleted list begins.
Bullet item 1 text reads, In an average day, guns kill 92 Americans—in homicides, suicides, and accidents. (Footnote 4: Xu et al., 2016.) Yet renewed calls for U.S. gun control tend to follow the well-publicized, mass shootings. An illustration shows a child reaching for a gun on a table.
Bullet item 2 text reads, Worldwide, 500,000 children die each year from diarrhea, with tragically little notice. An illustration shows a woman holding a baby.
At the bottom of the section is the text, Open quotes if it is in the news, don’t worry about it. The very definition of news is single quote ‘something that hardly ever happens. close single quote. Close quotes.