When you ask people, to choose between 100 million dollars in one year or 102 million dollars in one year and one day; all choose the 102 million dollars. “I can wait one more day.” When the same people were asked to choose between 100 dollars now or 102 dollars tomorrow, they all choose the 100 dollars. In a laboratory situation people had to bid on a 20 dollar bill, the endbid was $28! In another experiment the group had to bid on a bottle of wine. But before they wrote down their bid, they were asked to write down the last two numbers of their social security card. People with a high number, bid significantly more and higher. They were influenced by something, a seemingly irrelevant imput.

This what happens in the news, when a disaster happens. In the first reports the number of victims will be kept low. This is what sticks to our mind, even if the number of victims rises. In advertising and public relations these human biases are exploited.