Train your brain

Understand the power of cognitive shortcuts that your urbanism decision makers go through.

My kids had their share of organized sports when they were young. Each week, one of the families was responsible for bringing snacks for the entire team to enjoy after a game. Every so often, a parent would break the standard reward of cookies and soda as a snack.

Have you ever brought a team snack that resembles a nut? Or a snack that was packaged in the same state as a peanut? Or a snack that has a peanut-colored wrapper? You won’t get anywhere near your kid’s team. A swarm of helicopter parents and minivans box you in to destroy your stash. 

The peer pressure associated with peanut allergies is palpable. Parenting magazines…Facebook posts…birthday parties…organized sports…the peanut is the ultimate boogeyman. So it might surprise the average person that about 100 Americans die daily because of car crashes, while about zero Americans die daily because of peanut allergies. The most dangerous threat facing American children is the drive to school or soccer games, not the snacks they share.

One way to explain this disconnect is the availability heuristic. It’s a cognitive shortcut that helps individuals make decisions and judgments based on the ease with which relevant information comes to mind. The Psychology Dictionary defines availability heuristic as “a common quick strategy for making judgments about the likelihood of occurrence.” When you’re presented with a topic, your mind snags the first available and most used information. Accuracy doesn’t matter. 

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman first introduced the availability heuristic in the early 1970s. They were curious about the shortcuts our brains take when evaluating probabilities and making judgments under uncertainty. They observed that instead of engaging in a laborious, statistical analysis of risks and outcomes, people often rely on the ease with which relevant examples come to mind. Sometimes the path of least resistance is helpful, sometimes not so much.

Your brain has heard a million times that peanuts are, without a doubt, one of the most dangerous substances known to man, and any good parent would shield their children. The “usual suspect” threat levels to children go something like (1) nuclear explosion, (2) playing outside without supervision, (3) peanuts, (4) bicycling without a helmet, and then a long list of scenarios that are statistically never going to happen. 

You can see the availability heuristic at play all the time. You probably know someone who enjoys relaxing at the beach, but won’t get in the water because of sharks. Never mind that they’re more likely to win the lottery than to encounter Jaws. “If I want to soak, I’ll get in the bathtub instead.”

Pretending to be your shrink, I might say that despite the statistical rarity of shark attacks, sensational media coverage and dramatic portrayals in movies and television have inflated the perceived threat of sharks to an almost mythical level, while the commonplace nature of a bath makes you feel safe and calm. 

The brain gets bombarded with sensational headlines and video clips of (if it bleeds, it leads), so that’s what it pulls for you. There’s no media blitz about the CDC reports that you’re 14 times more likely to perish in the confines of your bathroom than from a shark attack. 

Stocking up on bread and milk before the snow starts, but no bottled water in the car. Offering ice cream and soda as part of the regular household meal plan, but no walking to school. You could come up with examples all day.

Policymakers are humans too (pretend, if you must), so they’re just as susceptible to making decisions based on available but incomplete or inaccurate data. Local planning departments, state transportation departments, environmental agencies, automobile safety agencies…they’re all run by decision makers whose minds may or may not be reaching for the best information. That’s where you and I come in. Help fill their brains with data, anecdotes, and stories so good urbanism is top of mind.

The repetition might feel exhausting, but it’s necessary.

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

― André Gide, author and Nobel laureate