Page 252 - The Social Animal

234 The Social Animal

Deemphasizing the negative can be an adaptive strategy when
what’s in store is a disliked vegetable, a discussion with someone
whom we’ve never met, or even learning to live with a president you
didn’t vote for.There are situations, however, when such a strategy can
prove disastrous. Consider the case of students at UCLA. Geological
studies conducted in the mid-1980s indicated that there was a 90 per-
cent probability of at least one major earthquake in Los Angeles dur-
ing the next 20 years. In the face of such an impending disaster,
rational people would no doubt acknowledge the danger and work to
prepare by learning all they can about it and by taking safety precau-
tions. In 1987, two social psychologists at UCLA, Darrin Lehman
and Shelley Taylor, conducted interviews with 120 undergraduates at
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their university and determined that such was not the case. Their
findings were unsettling: Only 5 percent had taken any safety precau-
tions (such as locating the nearest fire extinguisher); only one third
knew that the best action to take during a quake is to crawl under a
heavy piece of furniture or to stand in a doorway; and not one respon-
dent had taken preparatory measures recommended by experts. It
seems that even among well-educated people, a typical response to an
inevitable catastrophe is to do nothing to prepare for it.
It’s noteworthy that coping styles varied as a function of the stu-
dents’ living situation. Those students living in seismically unsafe
residence halls were more likely than those living in relatively safe
residence halls to cope with the impending disaster by refusing to
think about it or by minimizing the expected damage. That is, those
who were most at risk in the event of a quake were the very ones who
refused to think about the imminent catastrophe or who underesti-
mated its ultimate severity. In short, if I’m pretty sure that there’s
going to be an earthquake, how can I justify continuing to live in an
unsafe residence hall? Easy: I deny that there’s going to be an earth-
quake and refuse to think about it. Self-justifying responses to dan-
gerous and inevitable events can be comforting in the short run. But
when they keep us from taking steps to enhance our safety, such re-
sponses can, in the long run, prove deadly.
Needless to say, the geological predictions of the mid-1980s
proved to be correct. In the winter of 1994 there was a major earth-
quake in the Los Angeles area, resulting in a great deal of property
damage and the destruction of freeways, which disrupted transporta-
tion for several months. Fortunately, because the quake took place at
4:30 AM during a holiday, there was relatively little loss of life. Al-