Neuroscience
By Annalee Newitz
You may love stories about the end of the world, but that’s probably because, deep down, you don’t believe it could ever happen. But that’s not because you’re realistic. It’s actually a quirk of the human brain, recently explored by a group of neuroscientists, which prevents us from adjusting our expectations about the future — even if there’s good evidence that bad things are about to happen.
A group of researchers from Germany and the UK designed a fairly complex psychological test to determine how people planned for negative events in the future. First, they asked the about the likelihood of 80 different disturbing events happening, such as contracting a fatal disease or being attacked. After they’d recorded people’s responses, researchers told each subject the actual, statistical likelihood of such events happening. In some cases, people had overestimated the likelihood and in some cases they’d underestimated it.
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