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Exponential growth is consistently underestimated, and this underestimation has traditionally been viewed as reflecting a stable, if poor, mathematical ability. In this investigation, we show that exponential growth estimation is also susceptible to cognitive biases. In a series of three pre-registered experiments (total N = 2,836), we found that estimations of exponential growth are affected by the process being estimated, with larger underestimation for recovery than for infection cases of coronavirus. This difference in estimation was not associated with emotional and behavioral factors such as concerns regarding the virus or general anxiety (Experiments 1–3). When estimating exponential growth in the stock market (Experiment 2), the exponential growth of estimations of a positive (i.e., gains) or a negative (i.e., losses) scenario did not differ from each other, suggesting that the consistent larger underestimations of recovery (i.e., positive) compared to infection (i.e., negative) does not reflect a framing effect. Rather, this underestimation difference reflected the availability heuristic, as the difference was larger for people who were exposed (via more exposure to liberal than conservative news media outlets) to discussions about the exponential growth of coronavirus infection (Experiment 3). The importance of realizing that exponential growth is vulnerable to cognitive biases, that are shaped by the discourse in news media outlets is discussed. Particularly, this vulnerability should be taken into consideration by world leaders, especially when relying on the public’s understanding of exponential growth to counteract other global crises that grow exponentially and have severe implications for human life.
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