By base-rate fallacy do you mean most young people's way of thinking?

Many young people, especially high-school and college age, don't realize the risks they take with their lives almost everyday, because they think that horrible things could never happen to them. Well they are wrong statistically people in that age range are just as likely if not more likely to die of the same things all over the world (made that stat up myself). Specifically, I am talking about drinking and driving. How many of us know people who drink and drive? How many of us are those drunk drivers? Many people ignore the cold hard facts, they ignore stats like "teen alcohol use kills about 6,000 people each year, that is more than all illegal drugs combined" (Hingson & Kenkel, 2003). That is a chilling amount of people, yet many continue to travel down that path of destruction. For many young people to ever realize what they are doing is dangerous and wrong it takes a tragic death to someone close to them. This is an example of base-rate fallacy, which is the idea that people are more impacted by emotionally dramatic events and singular cases than statistics (Kassin, Fein, and Markus, 2011). In essence, people are willing to ignore potential life saving statistics until it happens to them or someone close to them. I have been extremely against drunk driving ever since I could understand what it is, because unfortunately I had my older brother taken from me because of it. Therefore, it is hard to say if I am also adhering to the base-rate fallacy, but simply started doing so before I had the choice to listen to statistics or if I am primed to recognize the danger and pay attention to the staggering statistics more so than people who have not lost people close to them 

Word to the wise don't wait for a dramatic event to happen to you, ignore that mental short-cut and take the long road to grandma's house (a little humor to end a serious blog).

-Thanks guys hope you enjoyed it and not only learned something about social psychology but a valuable life lesson as well! 

My mom, my older brother Jay, and me a few months before he was killed. 

Citation:

Hingson, Ralph and D. Kenkel. Social and Health Consequences of Underage Drinking. In press. As 

quoted in Institute of Medicine National Research Council of the National Academies. Bonnie, Richard J. and 

Mary Ellen O'Connell, eds. Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility. Washington, DC: The 

National Academies Press, 2003.

Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. (2011). Perceiving Persons.Social Psychology (8th ed., pp. 101-142). Belmont: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.