Rationalization
The water had been rising for hours, growing not only from the rain that had been falling on us but on the hundreds of square miles of watershed upstream. Our last day out, we just sat in our tents, waiting out the storm before we made lunch and then headed home. The creek’s edge slowly rose toward us, but that was to be expected. I read to pass the time. In a matter of hours, the ground we were on started to get wet, the rocky soil unable to hold any more water as a visible layer of water began to form on the surface, first as puddles and then as a thin but continuous layer across all of the mostly flat ground. We decided to hold off on lunch for a bit to conserve calories, in case we’d be there longer than planned. Meanwhile, the rain showed no sign of stopping, neither over our heads nor upstream of us.
We were stranded.
Normalcy bias is a cognitive phenomenon in which an individual underestimates the likelihood or impact of a disaster, instead believing that everything will continue normally. It’s just rain. It’s just puddling from all the heavy rain. The rain will stop, we’ll have lunch, and we’ll head home as planned.
The signs were there—rising water, saturated ground, unrelenting rain upstream—but I absorbed each one and explained them away as individual data rather than recognizing them as part of a bigger pattern.
The situation we experienced was a clear case of normalcy bias, and it is not unique to the outdoor environment. Ignoring signals from the physical environment is no different than ignoring signals from a client, supplier, or competitor. The client goes quiet and we take that as a sign that everything is fine. The supplier slowly starts to fall behind deadlines that impact your own work, each small slip explained away and forgotten as a discrete event. Your competitor underbids you and you explain it away as a one-time thing. Normalcy bias doesn’t blind you to the signals, but it does affect how you interpret them.
Routine plays a big part in normalcy bias. When you are lulled into normalcy by the predictability of situations, every data point is explained away and you don’t try to read deeper into what you see in the environment. Routine on its own is not a bad thing; just like walking down the street, countless parts of your personal and professional life are built into how you operate, and without that base level of programming you would fully exert yourself just to get through the day. Routine allows us to build off of the base programming of how we operate, allowing us to allocate cognitive power to new tasks. It just works in a static environment.
The challenge is that our environment is not static. Some events truly are black swans, but countless other major changes are obvious in hindsight, with our routines and normalcy bias tuning us out from the bigger picture while explaining the small deviations we see. The efficiency of routine comes at the cost of missing the signs.
Back to my experience, I’ve camped in that location countless times before. It had rained on me countless times while there, as well as in other locations. I’ve seen puddling from heavy rain. Those are all routine situations and ignored as such. Sure, I’ve driven by places with major flooding, observing from relative safety on the highway that side streets were underwater in one town, the water was up to the steps of one of the buildings in another. Those are exceptions, though, and don’t get built into my routine, just as water rising up to block my route out isn’t built into my routine.
A similarly dangerous bias is optimism bias; while normalcy bias tells you it won’t happen, optimism bias tells you that even if it does happen, you’ll be fine. Acting together, they can be dangerous. Even if you get past your normalcy bias and recognize the environmental pattern, optimism bias can still swoop in and lull you into complacency. “I get that something bigger is happening, but hey, I remember when a similar thing happened and I was just fine.” I have said that while outdoors as well as in work situations, and sure, sometimes it does work out. The danger is when it does not.
Just as routine is built-in programming that we develop, so are these biases. Both are worth naming and knowing, though, as a first step toward not getting caught the next time around.
We were within a quarter mile of a highway and were car camping, yet the situation was in many ways no less dire than if we had been in the wilderness. If we had been in the wilderness, short of being cliffed out and stuck, we would have had options to seek higher ground and a route out, without being burdened with unmovable possessions. Either situation would have been the same, in its own unique way. We were stranded, and it was through normalcy bias that he rationalized all of the subtle and not-so-subtle clues the environment had been giving us for hours, over a period during which we could have self-rescued. Fortunately for us, we were on the edge of cell service—barely—and able to call in help from someone with a rig capable of carrying and towing our vehicles through one hundred feet or so of new, raging creek to get us out.
The experience of being stranded, despite hours of opportunity to self-rescue, sparked a decades-long interest in disaster and survival psychology. It prompted my first foray into the field as I read works by Laurence Gonzales and Amanda Ripley. More than just fuel for arm-chair adventures, I’ve applied what I’ve learned to planning for and participating in wilderness adventures, as well as uncertain and challenging situations in a business environment.
The key is application. Normalcy bias can and will affect all of us. By actively questioning your environment, developing a habit of checking in with yourself and/or your group in the midst of challenging situations, and debriefing after the fact, you can develop “muscles” to counteract the bias. Also think about the cost of inaction, which may add fuel to the fire of your self-development. Challenge yourself to think about the consequences of action or inaction; in hindsight, cutting a trip short by a few hours (we planned to leave after lunch!) would have been a negligible cost compared to bringing in outside rescue.
What about you? What situations have you experienced that, after the fact, were obvious? What should you be questioning now? What are some ways you can develop habits to counteract normalcy bias?