A survey conducted by the German Socio-Economic Panel during the early phase of the SARS-CoV‑2 pandemic in spring 2020 showed that the perceived risks of SARS-CoV‑2 infection were a massive overestimation of the actual risks. A total of 5783 people (2.3% missing data) stated how likely they thought it was that SARS-CoV‑2 would cause a life-threatening illness in them in the next 12 months. The average subjective probability was 26%. We consider how such an overestimation could have occurred and how a more realistic risk assessment could be achieved in the population in a future pandemic. We show that qualitative attributes of the pandemic, the reporting of the media, and psychological features may have contributed to the overestimation of SARS-CoV‑2 risks. In its early stages, the SARS-CoV‑2 pandemic had qualitative characteristics known to lead to an overestimation of risks: The risks associated with the pandemic were new, unfamiliar, perceived as poorly controllable, and were taken involuntarily. Phenomena known from cognitive psychology such as the availability and anchor heuristics can also explain the overestimation of pandemic risks. Characteristics of media coverage such as the focus on individual fates and the associated neglect of the denominator also contributed to the gap between perceived and objective risk. In a potential future pandemic, people need to be vigilant but not in a panic. Better risk communication—for example, with better prepared figures and graphically presented percentages while avoiding the denominator neglect—could help the population to perceive risks of future pandemics more realistically.

德国社会经济小组在 2020 年春季 SARS-CoV-2 大流行初期进行的一项调查表明，SARS-CoV-2 感染的感知风险大大高估了实际风险。共有 5783 人（2.3% 的数据缺失）表示他们认为 SARS-CoV-2 在未来 12 个月内导致危及生命的疾病的可能性有多大。平均主观概率为 26%。我们考虑了这种高估是如何发生的，以及如何在未来的大流行中对人群进行更现实的风险评估。我们表明，大流行的定性属性、媒体的报道和心理特征可能导致了对 SARS-CoV-2 风险的高估。在早期阶段，SARS-CoV-2 大流行具有已知会导致高估风险的定性特征：与大流行相关的风险是新的、陌生的、被认为难以控制的，并且是非自愿的。从认知心理学中已知的现象，如可用性和锚定启发法，也可以解释对大流行风险的高估。媒体报道的特点，例如对个人命运的关注以及相关的对分母的忽视，也造成了感知风险和客观风险之间的差距。在未来可能发生的大流行病中，人们需要保持警惕，但不要恐慌。更好的风险沟通——例如，