Understanding cognitive biases is going to be one of the most important things you have to do if you are going to wage effective InformationWar.

• You have to understand your own biases to analyze information correctly
• You have to understand other folk's biases in order to get your message to them in terms they can understand

Today we will look at Normalcy Bias

This desire for the status quo is called the ‘Normalcy Bias’ and although it can be a natural defense mechanism, normalcy bias is one of the most dangerous biases we have. It goes by many names. It is also called the normality bias, analysis paralysis, incredulity response or the ostrich effect.
Beware Your Dangerous Normalcy Bias

There is a formal definition of normalcy bias...

What is Normalcy Bias?
Definition:
Normalcy bias is a psychological state of denial people enter in the event of a disaster, as a result of which they underestimate the possibility of the disaster actually happening, and its effects on their life and property. Their denial is based on the assumption that if the disaster has not occurred until now, it will never occur.
An Insight Into the Concept of Normalcy Bias in Psychology

However, we all should understand that disaster isn't always the focus of normalcy bias...it is any situation has negative consequences that can bring up normalcy bias.

Because other things line up and cause disaster down the road (slippery slope, growth complex, etc), it is important to recognize problems now that may arise down the road. This is really true in politics (I'll jump to the frogs boiling slowly point downpage).

“The reason why the totalitarian regimes can get so far toward realizing a fictitious, topsy-turvy world is that the outside nontotalitarian world, which always comprises a great part of the population of the totalitarian country itself, indulges also in wishful thinking and shirks reality in the face of real insanity just as much as the masses do in the face of the normal world.”
Hannah Arendt, 1951

Examples of Normalcy Bias/Ostrich Effect

• When Mount St. Helens volcano began rumbling in Washington State in 1980, Park Rangers issued warnings for resident to leave and blocked access to keep people out. Some residents ignored evacuation warnings and other campers and sightseers walked or drove around the barricades to get into the park. They’d always camped there and since there had never been a disaster before; their normalcy bias prevented them from understanding the possibility of one happening. Then the volcano violently erupted and 57 people were killed.
  Beware Your Dangerous Normalcy Bias
• Terrorists attacked the Bataclan theater in Paris in November 2015, during a concert by the band Eagles of Death Metal. The lead singer (at left in the following video), a lifelong shooting enthusiast, immediately recognized the gunfire, overcame normalcy bias and ran for cover. His lead guitarist, on the other hand, assumed the gunfire was a malfunction in the sound system and stood motionless on stage for several seconds.
  NORMALCY BIAS: UNDERSTANDING YOUR BRAIN’S REFLEX
  

A website for police officers has noted that members of that profession have "all seen videos of officers who were injured or killed while dealing with an ambiguous situation, like the old one of a father with his young daughter on a traffic stop". In a video referred to, "the officer misses multiple threat cues...because the assailant talks lovingly about his daughter and jokes about how packed his minivan is. The officer only seems to react to the positive interactions, while seeming to ignore the negative signals. It's almost as if the officer is thinking, 'Well I've never been brutally assaulted before so it certainly won't happen now.' No one is surprised at the end of the video when the officer is violently attacked, unable to put up an effective defense." This professional failure, notes the website, is a consequence of normalcy bias
Normalcy Bias

Frogs boiling Slowly

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
James Madison

This is why it is important both to understand how people's normalcy biases work,but also that it is not important that the cause of the bias be an immediate disaster.

We don't have to remain ignorant!

The Survival Mom gives us a list of 11 items that we can use to combat normalcy bias:

• Be willing to go through the painful process of acknowledging the uncertainty of our future. I compare it with the Kubler-Ross grief process:
  Denial (Normalcy Bias rearing its ugly head!),
  Anger — at politicians, circumstances, family members),
  Bargaining (“If I can just buy enough precious metals, we’ll be okay.”),
  Depression (Our children aren’t facing the same, sunny future that we did, America is changing before our eyes)
  Acceptance (I can’t do everything, but I can be proactive and do what I can.)
• Face facts, don’t hide from them. Confront financial difficulties, acknowledge your limits. Only when you face reality can you prepare for it.
• Trust your instincts. Headlines change on a dime. Take in a much bigger picture than a single, optimistic headline or the words of a politician seeking re-election. Trust your own five senses and what your gut is telling you.
• Start where you are with what you have.
• Fight feeling overwhelmed with lists and organization. Focus on what you will do today, this week, this month. Little by little it will all come together.
• Reach out to others. Start your own Survival Mom meet-up group. Spend time on preparedness and survival forums, as long as they don’t feed your fears. If there was ever a time for people to come together, this is it.
• It’s better to over-prepare than to be under-prepared. Normalcy Bias assures us that everything will be okay. A few extra bottles of water is all you really need. Those ten cans of tuna will be plenty! Go ahead and stock up more than you think you’ll need to. Make plans for scenarios that may be a bit far out but still within the realm of possibility.
• Make plans. Have an evacuation plan, and prepare for it. Have a hunker-down plan, and prepare for it. Decide ahead of time how you will face the most likely crises and communicate those plans with those who need-to-know. Write down your plans! Panic and stress have a way of erasing the logical parts of our brains!
• Be ready to act quickly and decisively. It’s better to take action too soon than too late.
• Take time off. Forget you ever heard of the word, ‘preparedness’. Go shopping and blow a few bucks on something completely unnecessary. Go out to lunch. Play with the kids. Spend an hour on the phone gossiping with your best friend. Give yourself a mental break! Your family needs you to be strong. You need to take care of yourself, body, soul, and spirit.
• Get physically fit. There is a huge connection between physical and mental fitness. Start with some sort of exercise and start today.

Wayne Black also offers additional means of defeating Normalcy Bias in this podcast.

Other references

Wiki

The bias of normalcy in a time of insanity

Frogs, Boiling Water and the Normalcy Bias

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