This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
It's one of the most iconic movie soundtracks of all time.
In 1975, a young Steven Spielberg scared the living daylights out of millions of people with jaws.
No whistles.
No whistles.
Everybody, please get out of the water.
A great white shark terrorizes in New England beach town as one victim becomes two, and then three, and then four.
People respond, first with denial, then fear, and finally outright hysteria.
After watching the movie, I remember being scared to even stick my toe in the ocean.
And even today, when I go to the beach, I can't help but peer out of the water and ask myself, is that a dorsal fin?
This week on hidden brain, the disconnect between our fears and the real dangers we face in our daily lives.
As the world grapples with a devastating pandemic, we consider how our minds assess risk, what makes us focus on some threats and not on others, and how can we use this knowledge to prepare for the future?
Paul Slovic is a psychologist at the University of Oregon.
For decades, he has studied how people think about risk and the mismatch between the intuitive feelings we have about risk and the way we analyze risk scientifically.
Paul Slovic, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Thank you, Shankar.
Glad to be here.
For years, Paul, the movie jaws made people afraid of going to the beach.
Did you ever think twice about swimming in the ocean after watching the movie?