" One study demonstrated that people's evaluation of a situation where they might receive a shock is insensitive to the probability of receiving the shock because their thinking is swamped by affective evaluation of the situation. People were willing to pay almost as much to avoid a i percent probability of receiving a shock as they were to pay to avoid a 99 percent probability of receiving a shock. Clearly the affective reaction to the thought of receiving a shock was overwhelming the subjects' ability to evaluate the probabilities associated.
Likewise, research by resource economists studying the public's valuation of environment damage indicates again that affective reaction interferes with people's processing of numerically important information. It was found that people would pay little more to save 200,ooo birds from drowning in oil ponds (mean estimate $88) than they would pay to save 2000 birds ($8o). "

― Keith E. Stanovich , What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought