There is a longstanding psychological term for this: psychic numbing, coined by Robert Jay Lifton. And that compounds with the tendency to make a decision based on one or a few prominent variables. Dr. Slovic has also researched factors that tend to make people — including presidents — more likely to favor a nuclear launch. Colonel Petrov thought it could be a false alarm and decided not to send the warning to his superiors. Because the colonel feared a nuclear war fought under false pretenses more than he feared not retaliating, a third world war did not begin.

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Persons: Robert Jay Lifton, they’re, ”, Slovic, we’re, —, Janice Stein, Stanislav Petrov’s, Petrov Organizations: University of Toronto Locations: Moscow, United States