Normalcy Bias or Why People Are Attached to Inaction

This week, the state of Texas was one of the first Us states to announce the reopening of businesses since the lockdown due to the coronavirus. According to the Governor, this is the first phase of getting Texas back to “normal”. Consequently, I kept asking myself “How can we be so sure that things are going to get back to normal life?”, and I came across the concept of “Normalcy bias”.

Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or to minimize threat warnings. This can be observed time after time through denial of natural disasters. In order to adjust to life’s obstacles, society operates under the mindset that everything is going to be fine, and nothing bad is really going to happen during a potential danger.

Indeed, life is not a movie. In a situation of danger like a Tsunami or a mass shooting, some people will not have the natural instinct to run and escape from danger. Some people would become paralised and in their shock would deny the reality.

Today most of us experienced a clear example of “normalcy bias”. In January 2020 most of the world began hearing of the novel coronavirus outbreak. Even though everyone knew from the beginning about the high level of infection of the virus and the danger of a global pandemic, most political and business leaders seemed to ignore the possibility of global pandemic event and pretend that it is just a “seasonal flu”.

Have you ever had an experience involving this phenomenon? How did you react?

Amine