shark attacks and coconuts (availability heuristics)

Keller, Siegrist, and Gutscher (2006) presented that a link between affect and availability heuristics presented by Tversky and kahneman (1982) is evidence that a negative affect such as fear can lead people, through the availability heuristic to perceive a greater level of risk in certain situations. I have seen this effect first hand, and I am sure that many of you have in the same way. Though this is not truly a personal experience as I have never personally been attacked by a shark the news reports almost every shark attack that happens each year, which leads many people to believe that a shark attack is far more likely than it actually is. In fact, if you mention the beach to most people the first thing they mention is sharks and the fear they have for them. I would argue that the fear stems from the readily available information on shark attacks, as every fatal attack that happens as rare as they are is posted on the news usually for a few days. My reason for this is that although shark attacks kill an average of ten people per year worldwide an average of 150 people a year are killed by having a coconut fall on their heads, and yet people don’t seem to be all that afraid of coconuts likely because there are never reports of coconut “attacks” on the news. This is my evidence for the availability heuristic at the very least playing some role in peoples’ fear of sharks, because although it is about 15 times as likely that an individual will be “attacked” by a coconut than a shark the deaths due to coconuts go unreported whereas the shark attacks are hyped up and reported on a regular basis making the information readily available.