Recently there was a terrorist attack and sarin gas was released into a crowd. Given your knowledge of how sarin affects the nervous system, why was this such a horrific attack?
What will be an ideal response?
Sarin, a synthetic chemical used as a bioweapon, is a colorless, odorless liquid that can evaporate into a gas. Sarin acts as a neurotoxin by inhibiting AChE, the enzyme that normally breaks down ACh in the synaptic gap. In the presence of sarin, ACh continues to remain active, and muscles are continually stimulated. This produces rapid fatigue and respiratory failure, as new messages from the motor system to diaphragm muscles are unable to produce movement. This attack was horrific because not only does it cause rapid injury, it can kill people in a very painful manner. It also requires that anyone wanting to help victims wait until the gas has dissipated or wear special protective gear so they don't also get exposed to the gas.
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Suppose that a doctor decides that a patient has a cold, rather than a much rarer disease, Disease X. She decides the disease is a cold, even though one symptom is fairly typical of Disease X and fairly atypical of a cold. This doctor is
a. paying attention to the base rate of the diseases. b. showing the confirmation bias. c. demonstrating the small-sample fallacy. d. combining the availability heuristic with the representativeness heuristic.
The fundamental attribution error may occur because humans ________ the impact of the situation because ________
A) underrepresent; of the compacting nature of memory B) overrepresent; of the expanding nature of memory C) underrepresent; it is often less visible to the observer D) overrepresent; it is often extremely salient to the observer