Exercise 3: Risk identification - “World Fashion”

Thao Nguyen- 612068

Situation A) Call for Economy
Right-wing and traditionally more conservative politicians
now even more strongly argue to open up all physical
stores very soon since the economic damage in their
opinion has become disproportionally high in relation to
the relative small impact of the pandemic on the country
population’s health, measured in % of total inhabitants.
Based on this piece of information, one of your team
colleagues proposes to assume that all physical stores
will open in countries with right-wing participation in local
governments from mid-February onwards.
Situation B) Call for Nurse vaccination campaign
The prime minister of Bavaria, a prominent opinion influencer
in Germany, calls for an information campaign that should
convince all nurses to be vaccinated soon. The call for a
campaign follows reservations and hesitations amongst about
½ of the nurses, which the prime minister of Bavaria argues
are based on fake news spread in social media.
Based on this piece of information, one of your team
colleagues proposes to assume that this campaign will happen
across Germany, and should be an important positive factor in
assessing if/when all physical stores will re-open.

1. Situation A: Motivational biases – Optimism bias

The decision of sustaining the economy by re-opening the stores despite of the worse scenario has
shown an optimistic views of the policians. The purpose of this decision is just based on a piece of
information about the existing economic issues instead of considering the further damages,
especially from the mid-February, which means that these conservative piliticians relatively ignore
the negative facts in citizen’s health conditions. Moreover, the sheer number of “unknowns” related
to such a strategy makes it a decidedly risky prospect. Desirability of options and choice could be
seen here if the majority of the citizens would expect a higher mortality rate when the objective is to
keep business open and minimise the impact on the economy and the politicians agree with the
citizens to sympathize them.

 To counteract: all the opinions of other politians should be measured and taken into account.
After that, conducting more research by asking more number of people involved to guess how
likely it was that they’d experience certain bad things. The chances of these bad events
occurring have been estimated again, the politicians were more likely to reduce their new
estimate to closely match it.
2. Situation B: Motivational biases –confirmation bias

Many people, who have a natural worry about long-term vaccine side effects, have been sculpted by
endless loops of affirmation on social-media, are unlikely to be reassured by the government. The
vaccine hesitation in this case could be explained by confirmation bias, which makes human beings
seek information that confirms or strengthens their self-beliefs or values.

 To counteract: Firstly, they should be open to disconfirmation, and allow themselves to be

wrong, whether their belief is for a religion, a political ideology or a cultural worldview. Then,
discussing the issues with a diverse group of people is a way to seeking out information from
different perspectives. Most importantly, hypotesis test should be conducted such as searching
out disconfirming evidence of their perceptions, and forming factually-supported arguments
with new evidence that can further prove their point.