Gut feelings: biases, heuristics and Covid-19

I argue in this chapter that the strong global support for lockdowns arise from a particular set of cognitive errors that can be analyzed using lessons drawn from the heuristics and biases literature. I introduce readers to the distinction between "identified lives" and "statistical lives" as well as between System 1 (or intuitive thinking) and System 2 (or deliberative thinking). System 2 or deliberative thinking is especially important in situations that are unfamiliar and complex generating significant uncertainty. I explain the concept of the "availability heuristic" including notions of priming, framing and anchoring biases. I show how such cognitive errors and biases played a pronounced role both in why policy-makers resorted to lockdowns and how the general public accepted these willingly.