Normalcy Biases Are Dangerous

And yet everyone has them...

That’s weird, I could have sworn I locked the door when I left…

Instead of this being alarming to you, the open door in front of you is causing your brain to rationalize what you’re seeing. It’s telling you that you left it that way. It had to be you. After all… you live alone.

It is normal to rationalize something like this. It is normal to tell yourself that this is your mistake. It couldn’t be that someone is in your house, right? That couldn’t happen to you, that happens in stories that you hear on the internet, and to other people. Nothing weird ever happens to you, so surely, you left it open.

You further convince yourself that you are correct when you have a cursory look around and nothing seems out of place. You will just remind yourself to be more cautious in the future.

You like to go running, and don’t like dealing with people. You have found a trail that you like and make sure to get there early in the morning so you can avoid having to share it. One day when you get there, you see another car that isn’t usually there. Instead of deciding that today might not be the day to run your usual route you put your earphones in, crank up the music, and start your run. You rationalize that the person that you see behind you is just another runner, and you even move over a bit to give them room to pass you. Them running faster than you are, directly toward you surely means that they want to pass… right?

You just got off work and head to the grocery store. Working swing shifts puts you shopping when very few people are even awake. You get the store almost entirely to yourself. When you are leaving and walking out to your car you see another vehicle parked very close to your own. Surely it’s someone else shopping, right? They just so happened to pick parking directly next to your car despite there being an entire parking lot open and available. Instead of going back into the store to ask someone to escort you to your car, you decide it’s nothing to worry about.

All of these examples are normalcy biases. Nothing bad could happen, because nothing bad has happened in the past. Even if something is out of the ordinary, you don’t take that as something to factor into your behavior. You just proceed as though everything is the same as it always is.

I think that normalcy biases are quite dangerous, especially for women. I don’t know why people are so eager to grant the benefit of the doubt to strangers and situations that have elements that should be serving as warning signs, but they do, and often. Women tend to be too accommodating of both the normalcy bias and of people imposing on them in situations that make them uncomfortable. I don’t know if they think that no one has bad intentions toward them, or that even if they do they can be kind and the person will be kind back.

If someone intends to do you harm, this does not work. A lot of these situations that people find themselves in can be mitigated by making good decisions prior to the situation unfolding in the first place. If you see your front door open, and you are pretty sure that you locked it when you left, call the police, and have them clear the house. Not seeing anything amiss when you go inside does not mean that there isn’t someone hiding in your closet waiting for you to go to sleep.

Also, no, you should not attempt to clear the house yourself. Even if you are super brave and can handle whatever comes to you, chances are you aren’t as brave as you think, and even if you are you have very little chance of defending yourself if you do find someone hiding. Even if you are in pretty good shape, do you think that you are going to be able to take this guy down:

when he knows that you’re coming because he can hear you, and you are convinced that you are just being silly checking the closets? Even if you have a weapon, unless you are trained to use it well, and are trained in home defense, Mr. Muscles up there still has the upper hand, and has already made the crucial decision that you haven’t even considered yet, which is, how much am I willing to put on the line for this interaction?

Mr. Muscles wouldn’t be hiding and waiting for you to go to sleep if he wasn’t willing and likely intends to do something awful to you. You on the other hand have not realized the gravity of the situation that you are in.

Let’s switch scenarios, shall we? Do you remember when you first heard about an illness that was gripping China? How did you respond to it? Did you think, this could be bad, I should take steps to make sure that I am covered. Or did you think, it will be fine?

I pay attention to news from all over the world, and I knew that Covid was coming in December. I informed my household, and everyone agreed that preparations would need to be made. However, outside of our household aside from a few of my relatives, people did not heed the warning. They thought we were being ridiculous, and most had not even heard about the illness, to begin with, and did not respond to anything that we told them until they found themselves facing exactly what we decided to avoid. When reality hit them, it was a reality that they were not prepared for.

Why did no one respond the way that we did? Normalcy bias. They didn’t think it would ever happen that a disease would come to their doorstep. It just couldn’t happen to them. They simply couldn’t accept what I saw as inevitable. When they were faced with empty store shelves they reversed gears and did a one-eighty. They went from dismissing the warnings to being the heralds of alarm. Suddenly the same people that thought that there was nothing to worry about were the very same ones telling us what we needed to do to prepare.

No, we didn’t. We prepared months ago, and didn’t need to do it all at once. We had time because not only do we pay attention, we don’t have an emotional need for the world to stay exactly just so and refuse to act when action was necessary. There was no panic, just reasonable and prudent preparation. Our freezer and pantries are full, and the coming lockdown, while inconvenient, was tolerable. Had they listened to us they would have been in the same situation, but the normalcy bias kept them from accepting reality and acting. Even people that we knew to be logical, they thought we were simply overreacting.

The world has no interest in your comfort level in your life, nor how invested you are in the belief that nothing is wrong while things burn down around you.

Normalcy bias blinds you to things that you should be paying attention to. If you do pay attention and are able to pick out the good information from the bad, you will have an upper hand in the ability to prepare. You also will not have normalcy bias informing you that everything is fine when you should be on your guard.

People often speak about instincts. I am not certain that instincts are a real thing. I lean more toward instinct being observations that you have made over a long period of time that let you know something is off. It is a compilation of these observations that give you the ability to “automatically” tune into a person or situation not being a good one.

I have been observing people for years and tend to be able to pick up immediately when they are lying. I don’t have a feeling that they are lying, I know that they are. I have learned over many years what to look for in truth-telling as opposed to lying, and in doing so I am very good at “automatically” knowing when someone is lying. It isn’t instinct, it is just that accumulation of knowledge that has become ingrained. When someone asks me how I know, it would require me to be able to describe that whole body of information that I have gleaned over many many years. Perhaps this is just how psychopathic instincts work, and neurotypicals have a different system that they are relying on.

No matter where they come from, listen to them. If something tells you that someone isn’t above board on intentions, or that a situation is uneasy, listen. Ladies, specifically for you, stop worrying about being nice in those situations. If someone bothers you instinctually, look for a way out. Do not lie to yourself that you are overreacting. Even if you are, what is more important to you? Their feelings about you misjudging them, or your life, when you realize that you are not?

When you are walking to your car in an empty parking lot and someone is parked right next to you, have someone walk you out. Do not convince yourself that you are perfectly capable of handling it. You aren’t. A quick story about how much you cannot handle it.

There is a writer over on Quora that has done Krav Maga for years. Part of their training was that they would be abducted. The students knew that it would happen, but not when or where it would happen. No matter who the student was, no matter how trained they were, when the time came, none of them could physically prevent being abducted. You can’t either, but you can mitigate the risk. If someone is parked next to you, you do not approach that car on your own.

If you are accosted somewhere and the goal of the attacker is to take you somewhere else, now is your time to scream. Loud and long, make a scene. Bite, kick, scratch, but most important, draw attention to yourself. The more trouble you are, the less likely that they will take you. If you are taken to a secondary location, you will die. There is no other reason to take you from your location unless they are going to kill you outright or sell you. Either way, you are going to die.

Do not believe that the car parked next to you is a coincidence.

Do not believe that the door being ajar at your home is your own forgetfulness.

Do not believe that you can survive if you go quietly.

Do not believe that just because you believe that nothing bad can happen in your life, that it isn’t happening and you are just ignoring it so you can feel better.

When I say to pay attention, I don’t mean for you to become a totally paranoid person. You have to find sources that you have seen to be reliable and ahead of the normal cycle of information. Take the information that you glean, and use it to prepare. if you do it properly you will be ready for the things that seem to sideline most of the world.

In my experience, some people will even think that you are psychic. This happens to me frequently. One person that I used to know planned a trip to New Orleans in the middle of August 2005. Of course, I was paying attention and knew that Katrina was going to be a beast. I told them not to go. They thought, “how bad could it be?”. I didn’t go so far as to forbid them from going, I am not their mother after all, but I really emphasized that it was dangerous and New Orleans was going to be devastated.

In the end, they didn’t go, and when it hit and all I predicted came true, they told everyone that would listen I was psychic and saved their lives. No, I am not. I simply paid attention and could deduce from what I was hearing that it would be really bad.

When the normalcy biases of people are finally shattered, you will see some of the most selfish behaviors you can imagine. They spent too long believing that everything is fine that by the time they wake up they are on the wrong end of being prepared. Emotionally they cannot handle that things are awful, and when they finally know without a doubt that they are they respond emotionally as well, and it becomes them against the world. Everyone is their enemy, and they would take the last pork chop out of the hands of their neighbor if they can. You don’t have to be caught in that storm by paying attention and being proactive.

Normalcy feels good, it feels safe, but it isn’t reality. Things are going to happen, and it is better if you are paying attention and can take care of yourself. When people would prefer things just be normal and they ignore what is happening, they can find themselves in terrible situations or allow themselves to ignore when awful things are happening in the world.

Do not allow yourself to be lulled into believing all is well because it is too uncomfortable to consider that it isn’t.