122 / Conclusion
drowning. Yet, President George W. Bush appeared on Good Morn-
ing America on September 1, 2005, and said, “I don’t think anyone
could have anticipated the breach of the levees.” He and numer-
ous other offi cials had simply not taken well-documented problems
seriously. Had they given negative information its due, perhaps
they could have taken steps to reduce everyone’s vulnerability to
Katrina.
Positive asymmetry has cognitive and cultural roots that make
it diffi cult to overcome. Granted, much of the time, things work out
just fi ne, even if the best does not happen, and it is psychologically
better to think on the bright side. Nevertheless, as Cerulo explains,
in many cases, “we regret our inability to imagine the worst. And
during such times, we bemoan our biased perceptual tendencies....
If only—probably two of the most frequently uttered words in the
American lexicon.”^17 The inability to envision and anticipate the
worst keeps us optimistic, but it also limits our capacity to pre-
pare. Indeed, this positive asymmetry even appears in the existing
books on animals in disasters.^18 The stories and photographs of
rescue efforts provide important recognition for and reminders of
the work people do on behalf of animals. However, they retain the
“we never imagined” perspective that limits how we think about
animals and disasters. They lack the analysis I have attempted to
bring to the discussion. Thus, the implications of positive asymme-
try have obvious relevance for disaster research and response.
In this book, I attempt to draw attention to the negative infor-
mation about the hazards to which we regularly expose animals. If
we want to reduce the risks of positive asymmetry, acknowledging
our blind spots brings valuable information to light that can set us
on the path to more symmetrical thinking. The next step involves
evaluating that information, but we face a cognitive obstacle there,
too. Cerulo argues that we often envision the best and worst at
opposite ends of a continuum, when in fact they may entail dif-
ferent outcomes altogether. To illustrate, she refers to her students
who listed winning lots of money among the best and death among
the worst. The best and worst are not opposites but are conceptu-
ally quite different outcomes. Often the worst remains vague or