Or not, as the case may be. An interesting report from the New Scientist. 
"Terrorism has a distorting effect on people's decision making"? Surely 
not....


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How to keep your head in scary situations
  a.. 27 August 2008
  b.. Michael Bond
  c.. Magazine issue 2671
YOU'RE at the airport about to take a flight when you suddenly realise you 
forgot to buy travel insurance. You go to your airline's ticket desk where 
they offer you a choice: a package that covers death from terrorism, and a 
cheaper deal covering death by any means. Which do you choose?

It sounds like a no-brainer. The cheaper option covers terrorism and 
everything else, so is the better deal. Yet when psychologists tested these 
alternatives in experiments, they found that most people preferred to pay 
more for terrorism-only insurance instead of the cheaper option covering all 
causes of death. The mere suggestion of terrorism had such a distorting 
effect on people's decision-making that it led them to make a very poor 
choice (Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, vol 7, p 35).

Bill Again wrote:
> Or not, as the case may be. An interesting report from the New Scientist. 
> "Terrorism has a distorting effect on people's decision making"? Surely 
> not....
> 
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> How to keep your head in scary situations
>   a.. 27 August 2008
>   b.. Michael Bond
>   c.. Magazine issue 2671
> YOU'RE at the airport about to take a flight when you suddenly realise you 
> forgot to buy travel insurance. You go to your airline's ticket desk where 
> they offer you a choice: a package that covers death from terrorism, and a 
> cheaper deal covering death by any means. Which do you choose?
> 
> It sounds like a no-brainer. The cheaper option covers terrorism and 
> everything else, so is the better deal. Yet when psychologists tested these 
> alternatives in experiments, they found that most people preferred to pay 
> more for terrorism-only insurance instead of the cheaper option covering all 
> causes of death. The mere suggestion of terrorism had such a distorting 
> effect on people's decision-making that it led them to make a very poor 
> choice (Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, vol 7, p 35).

Is this not simply because the real world, rather than a thought 
experiment, people suspect the "any means" policy will have a footnote 
in 4 point text on page 94 of the terms and conditions saying "well, any 
means except terrorism"? Especially if they are given a choice between 
an option which explicitly says it is included, and one which doesn't.

On the face of it, this looks like taking a "real world" problem and 
applying too much of a "pure" approach. A consumer magazine could report 
the same results as "hurrah, people have leaned that terrorism might be 
excluded from a normal policy, so it is best to get extra cover".

There was a fairly high profile case a while ago of some people having 
problems because their travel insurance refused to pay out over a 
terrorist incident, and warnings that people should check.

-- 
Arthur Figgis               Surrey, UK