On the gap between objective and perceived risks of COVID-19

A survey conducted by the German Socio-Economic Panel during the early phase of the SARS-CoV‑2 pandemic in spring 2020 showed that the perceived risks of SARS-CoV‑2 infection were a massive overestimation of the actual risks. A total of 5783 people (2.3% missing data) stated how likely they thought it was that SARS-CoV‑2 would cause a life-threatening illness in them in the next 12 months. The average subjective probability was 26%. We consider how such an overestimation could have occurred and how a more realistic risk assessment could be achieved in the population in a future pandemic. We show that qualitative attributes of the pandemic, the reporting of the media, and psychological features may have contributed to the overestimation of SARS-CoV‑2 risks. In its early stages, the SARS-CoV‑2 pandemic had qualitative characteristics known to lead to an overestimation of risks: The risks associated with the pandemic were new, unfamiliar, perceived as poorly controllable, and were taken involuntarily. Phenomena known from cognitive psychology such as the availability and anchor heuristics can also explain the overestimation of pandemic risks. Characteristics of media coverage such as the focus on individual fates and the associated neglect of the denominator also contributed to the gap between perceived and objective risk. In a potential future pandemic, people need to be vigilant but not in a panic. Better risk communication—for example, with better prepared figures and graphically presented percentages while avoiding the denominator neglect—could help the population to perceive risks of future pandemics more realistically.