Abstract
Humans grossly underestimate exponential growth, but are at the same time overconfident in their (poor) judgement. The so-called ‘exponential growth bias' is of new relevance in the context of COVID-19, because it explains why humans have fundamental difficulties to grasp the magnitude of a spreading epidemic. Here, we addressed the question, whether logarithmic scaling and contextual framing of epidemiological data affect the anticipation of exponential growth. Our findings show that underestimations were most pronounced when growth curves were linearly scaled and framed in the context of a more advanced epidemic progression. For logarithmic scaling, estimates were much more accurate, on target for growth rates around 31%, and not affected by contextual framing. We conclude that the logarithmic depiction is conducive for detecting exponential growth during an early phase as well as resurgences of exponential growth.
Highlights
Humans grossly underestimate exponential growth, but are at the same time overconfident in their judgement
Predictions for logarithmic scaling were near the target for growth rates of 31% and better than those for linear scaling for a growth rate of 34%
The objective of the present study was to assess whether the way in which epidemic data is visualized might help to attenuate the exponential growth bias
Summary
Humans grossly underestimate exponential growth, but are at the same time overconfident in their ( poor) judgement. The so-called ‘exponential growth bias’ is of new relevance in the context of COVID-19, because it explains why humans have fundamental difficulties to grasp the magnitude of a spreading epidemic. We addressed the question, whether logarithmic scaling and contextual framing of epidemiological data affect the anticipation of exponential growth. Humans are overconfident despite their poor judgements [3] This effect was hitherto primarily investigated in the domain of economics concerning, for example, the anticipation of the development of interests, and called the ‘exponential growth bias’ [4]. While being the obvious choice from a mathematical perspective, little is known about how logarithmic plotting affects human anticipation of exponential growth. Concerning an arising epidemic, the mere detection of exponential growth per se is of importance, but not so much the exact estimate of the final numbers
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