An important class of judgments is those concerning risk : the expectation of harm to result from a given threat , a function of the threat 's likelihood and impact . Changes in perceived risk result in risk compensation — correspondingly more or less mitigation , including precautionary measures and support for regulation . Kuran and Sunstein offer three examples of availability cascades — Love Canal , the Alar scare , and TWA Flight 800 — in which a spreading public panic led to growing calls for increasingly expensive government action to deal with risks that turned out later to be grossly exaggerated . Others have used the term " culture of fear " to refer to the habitual achieving of goals via such fear appeals , notably in the case of the threat of terrorism
TWA Flight 800
TWA Flight 800
Availability cascade