India, Aug. 9 -- On the freezing night of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic sideswiped an iceberg in the North Atlantic. As water began filling the lower compartments, crew members ordered passengers to put on lifebelts and board the wooden lifeboats; many flatly refused. Instead, they went back to their luxury cabins to finish reading their books, to the smoking room to play cards, while some played with ice on the deck. The passengers' minds ignored the emergency as the ship had been marketed by global experts as "practically unsinkable", and they could not conceive that it could actually sink.

THE NORMALCY BIAS

How could highly educated, successful people ignore a flashing red flag of survival? Yet, this bizarre behaviour is a fundamen...