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People seeking shelter during tornadoes and cyclones are often called back, or delayed, by people doing normal activities, who refuse to believe the emergency is happening. These people are displaying what’s known as normalcy bias. About 70% of people in a disaster do it. Although movies show crowds screaming and panicking, most people move dazedly through normal activities in a crisis. This can be a good thing; researchers find that people who are in this state are docile and can be directed without chaos. They even tend to quiet and calm the 10-15% of people who freak out.
The downside of the bias is the fact that they tend to retard the progress of the 10-15% of people who act appropriately. The main source of delay masquerades as the need to get more data. Scientists call this “milling.” People will usually get about four opinions on what’s going on and what they should do before taking any action — even in an obvious crisis. People in emergency situations report calling out to others, asking, “What’s going on?” When someone tells them to evacuate, or to take shelter, they fail to comply and move on, asking other people the same question. -Esther Inglis-Arkell
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story using normalcy bias to create conflict.
Journaling Prompt: When do you tend to deny danger, whether it’s a tornado or something more abstract, like overdue bills? How do you act?
Art Prompt: Normalcy Bias
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Inform your audience about normalcy bias and how it reveals information about our ability to deny what is in front of us. Give your audience strategies to break through denial.
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Archie Sheridan slept with the light on. -Chelsea Cain, Kill You Twice
Fiction Writing Prompt: Use the first line of the week as the starting point or inspiration for a scene, story, poem, or haiku.
Journaling Prompt: Have you ever slept with a night light? Why or why not?
Art Prompt: Sleeping with the light on
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Give your audience information on how to establish healthy sleeping habits.
Photo Credit: creating in the dark on Flickr
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Create whatever this visual prompt inspires in you!
Photo by Rising Damp on Flickr.
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What happens is I write a first sentence, then I read the sentence that I’ve just written, and then I immediately erase that sentence; then I begin anew by writing another first sentence for a completely different story; then another first sentence for another story, so on and so forth.” Courtney Eldridge, Unkempt
Fiction Writing Prompt: Use the first line of the week as the starting point or inspiration for a scene, story, poem, or haiku.
Journaling Prompt: What do you do when you have trouble getting started writing in your journal?
Art Prompt: Abandoned Beginnings
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the importance of beginning well and the dangers of getting stuck.
Photo Credit: Anthony Mianzo on Flickr
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But when it came to the Princess’s turn to give an acid drop to the dragon, he smiled a very wide smile, and wagged his tail to the very last long inch of it, as much as to say, “Oh, you nice, kind, pretty little Princess.” But deep down in his wicked purple heart he was saying, “Oh, you nice, fat, pretty little Princess, I should like to eat you instead of these silly acid drops.” But of course nobody heard him except the Princess’s uncle, and he was a magician, and accustomed to listening at doors. It was part of his trade. -Edith Nesbitt, The Book of Dragons (free Kindle book)NOTE: an acid drop is a old fashioned boiled sweet with a sharp taste
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story or poem about a princess who tries to befriend a dragon.
Journaling Prompt: How do you flirt with danger?
Art Prompt: The Princess, the Dragon, and the Magician
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about how we try to allay our fears by placating them. Give your audience a better solution.
Photo Credit: thejbird on Flickr
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…you would think that the more people are paid, the harder they will work, and the better they will do their jobs — until they reach the limits of their skills. That notion tends to hold true when the stakes are low, says Vikram Chib, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech and lead author on a paper published in the May 10 issue of the journal Neuron. Previous research, however, has shown that if you pay people too much, their performance actually declines.
Some experts have attributed this decline to too much motivation: they think that, faced with the prospect of earning an extra chunk of cash, you might get so excited that you will fail to do the task properly. But now, after looking at brain-scan data of volunteers performing a specific motor task, the Caltech team says that what actually happens is that you become worried about losing your potential prize. The researchers also found that the more someone is afraid of loss, the worse they perform. -Science Daily
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a scene where your protagonist earns a raise or a prize. Show how it affects his or her job performance afterwards.
Journaling Prompt: What is more motivating to you: hope of gain or fear of loss? Why?
Art Prompt: Demotivated at Work
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Inform your audience about subconscious fear of loss and how it can be overcome.
Photo Credit: dickuhne on Flickr
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…scientists wanted to see whether or not people could be scared to death. They looked for a likely belief, and found it in the Chinese and Japanese idea that the number four is unlucky. Obviously, finding a random sampling of subjects and attempting to scare them to death would be unethical, so the scientists reluctantly turned their attention to existing death certificates. The scientists looked and Japanese and Chinese death certificates, and those of white Americans as the control. They found that while white Americans saw no major peak for cardiac deaths, Japanese and Chinese cardiac deaths peaked on the fourth of the month every months.
Why? The stress and worry of approaching an unlucky day actually caused people to have heart attacks. The fourth of every month acted the same way a Sherlock Holmes murderer did, and so the phenomenon was called The Baskerville Effect. Worry actually can kill. So don’t worry, or you will die. -Esther Inglis-Arkell
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story or scene about someone who is scared to death.
Journaling Prompt: What are you most afraid of? How do you deal with your fear?
Art Prompt: Scared to Death
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the effect of fear, stress, and worry on your life.
Photo Credit: Silentmind8 on Flickr
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When Abbess Ebba received tidings of the near approach of the pagan hordes, who had already wrecked vengeance upon ecclesiastics, monks, and consecrated virgins, she summoned her nuns to Chapter, and in a moving discourse exhorted them to preserve at any cost the treasure of their chastity. Then seizing a razor, and calling upon her daughters to follow her heroic example, she mutilated her face in order to inspire the barbarian invaders with horror at the sight. The nuns without exception courageously followed the example of their abbess. When the Danes broke into the cloister and saw the nuns with faces thus disfigured, they fled in panic. Their leaders, burning with rage, sent back some of their number to set fire to the monastery, and thus the heroic martyrs perished in the common ruin of their house. -A Calendar of Scottish Saints by Michael Barrett
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story about heroic women facing danger.
Journaling Prompt: What sacrifice would you be willing to make to protect something important to you?
Art Prompt: Courageous Sacrifice
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write a story about an ordinary person who made a courageous sacrifice in the face of a great challenge.
Photo Credit: dragon caiman on Flickr
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He had lost his courage. In its place was a sick nausea. -L. Ron Hubbard, The Great Secret (Stories from the Golden Age)
Fiction Writing Prompt: Use this as a first line for a story or as the inspiration for a poem.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when your courage left you.
Art Prompt: Fear
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about fear and its impact on your life or the life of a famous person.
Photo Credit: fluffisch on Flickr
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During the night of May 18/19 of 1910, when the Earth passed through the tail of comet Halley, some people took precautions by sealing the chimneys, windows, and doors of their houses. Others confessed to crimes they had committed because they did not expect to survive the night, and a few panic-stricken people actually committed suicide. Enterprising merchants sold comet pills and oxygen bottles, church services were held for overflow crowds, and people in the countryside took to their storm shelters. A strangely frivolous mood caused thousands of people to gather in restaurants, coffee houses, parks, and on the rooftops of apartment buildings to await their doom in the company of fellow humans. -Gunter Faure and Teresa Mensing, Introduction to Planetary Science: The Geological Perspective
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story set during a time when people believe that they are doomed.
Journaling Prompt: How would you spend tonight if you knew it was the last night of your life?
Art Prompt: Awaiting Doom
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: How do you see the tendency toward doom and despair playing out in today’s world?
Photo Credit: NASAblueshift on Flickr
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