PSYCH 2800 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Asthma, Terror Management Theory
Document Summary
Evolution has given us a relatively clear impression of what is most dangerous and what forms of death/threat levels to fear most. More deadly: car accident or stomach cancer? (cancer. ) A lot of common fears are vastly overestimated risks: tornado, flood, all cancer, venomous bites, homicide, car accidents. We think of these risks as fatal, often only attend to the deaths in these cases. Underestimate: lightning, diabetes, stroke, asthma, tuberculosis, emphysema. Often attend to living versions of these risks, not the deaths. Statistically more likely to get in accident in the car on the way to the airport than on the plane itself. World seems more dangerous to people than is the case because of the media coverage of horrible events. Stroop task: conflict between two stimuli -- reading words spelling one word that is a different color (trying to say the color of the word is difficult due to interference).