Human Behavior

Algorithms Learn Our Workplace Biases. Can They Help Us Unlearn Them? – The New York Times

Humu uses artificial intelligence to analyze its clients employee satisfaction, company culture, demographics, turnover and other factors, while its signature product, the nudge engine, sends personalized emails to employees suggesting small behavioral changes (those are the nudges) that address identified problems.

One key focus of the nudge engine is diversity and inclusion. Employees at inclusive organizations tend to be more engaged. Engaged employees are happier, and happier employees are more productive and a lot more likely to stay.

With Humu, if data shows that employees arent satisfied with an organizations inclusivity, for example, the engine might prompt a manager to solicit the input of a quieter colleague, while nudging a lower-level employee to speak up during a meeting. The emails are tailored to their recipients, but are coordinated so that the entire organization is gently guided toward the same goal.

Unlike Amazons hiring algorithm, the nudge engine isnt supposed to replace human decision-making. It just suggests alternatives, often so subtly that employees dont even realize theyre changing their behavior.

Jessie Wisdom, another Humu founder and former Google staff member who has a doctorate in behavioral decision research, said sometimes she would hear from people saying, Oh, this is obvious, you didnt need to tell me that.

Even when people may not feel the nudges are helping them, she said, data would show that things have gotten better. Its interesting to see how people perceive what is actually useful, and what the data actually bears out.

In part thats because the nudge doesnt focus on changing minds, said Iris Bohnet, a behavioral economist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. It focuses on the system. The behavior is what matters, and the outcome is the same regardless of the reason people give themselves for doing the behavior in the first place.

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Algorithms Learn Our Workplace Biases. Can They Help Us Unlearn Them? - The New York Times

Human Behavior

Three fatal hit-and-runs in three months on Sunset Boulevard have authorities seeking suspects and solutions – The Eastsider LA

Echo Park - Three fatal hit-and-runs in three months, all within a half-mile of each other along Sunset Boulevard. Thats a lot.

While the city studies whether to install another traffic or pedestrian crossing signal to improve safety, the officers investigating the incidents between Douglas Street and While Knoll Drive are mainly focused on one problem: Human error.

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"Its nothing [to do] with engineering issues, said Juan Campos, a detective with the LAPD Central Traffic Division, who is investigating one of the cases and overseeing the other two. "Its all about human behavior."

Campos was referring specifically to the most recent accident, the pedestrian death on Sunset near White Knoll Drive on the border of Echo Park and Victor Heights.

A study has been requested to look at traffic accident near Sunset and White Knoll, according to Conrado Terrazas Cross, communications director for Council District 1. But he, too, emphasized the human factors in the area - the speeding, the jaywalking.

"Its just really dangerous out there," Cross said. "Even though you have the right as a pedestrian, a car will still kill you."

In the three incidents, Campos noted the factors that led to the collisions:

Jos Vaquero-Gonzalez, age 60, was crossing the street on Dec. 1 when he was hit by a dark blue car.

Google Maps

Jos Vaquero-Gonzalez, age 60, was crossing Sunset at about 5:20 a.m. when he was hit by a dark blue car - possibly a Honda or Hyundai - and died at the scene.

Campos noted that the car had the green traffic light, and that the pedestrian was crossing outside the crosswalk, against the Dont Walk signal.

"Our theory was that he was trying to catch a bus," Campos said. He added that the pedestrian seemed to be at fault in this case.

The motorist remains at large. Anyone with information is asked to the call the LAPD Central Traffic Division detectives at (213) 833-3713.

Rosa Garcia, age 61, was killed when her 2004 Toyota Corolla was hit head-on on Jan. 24 by a 2019 BMW M4, which had allegedly been stolen.

Google Maps

Rosa Garcia, age 61, was killed when her 2004 Toyota Corolla was hit head-on by a 2019 BMW M4, which had allegedly been stolen.

The BMW driver - Ilya Foks - left the scene on foot, but was photographed as he fled, and had left behind his wallet and driver license.

He was arrested a few days later near the 8300 block of Sepulveda Boulevard and was booked on suspicion of Vehicular Manslaughter. He is currently awaiting a preliminary hearing, Campos said.

The problem here seems to have been speeding.

The speed limit for that stretch is already a mild 35-miles-an-hour. But witnesses said Foks seemed to have been driving at around 50, Campos said.

At a slight curve, he lost control of the car and went into Garcias lane.

Morena Del Carmen Alvarado-Lopez, age 58, was killed, and her 71-year-old husband was injured when they were struck by a burgundy or red four-door passenger vehicle on Feb. 24.

Google Maps

Morena Del Carmen Alvarado-Lopez, age 58, was killed, and her 71-year-old husband was injured when they were struck by a burgundy or red four-door passenger vehicle at about 12:50 a.m. as they were leaving the Club Bahia nightclub.

They were dragged about 50 feet before they were dislodged from the car. There is no further description of the car, or further updates on the case, Campos said.

In this case, Campos noted that the area was well lit, with all the overhead lights on. The pedestrians crossed mid-block instead of at the corner. Campos noted that the driver did not seem to see the pedestrians, but then fled the scene.

The motorist remains at large. Anyone with information is asked to the call the LAPD Central Traffic Division detectives at (213) 833-3713.

Conrado Terrazas Cross added that a traffic study currently underway could be a step toward eventually getting a stoplight or at least a flashing HAWK beacon for that area.

Sidewalk memorial for Rosa Garcia on Sunset Boulevard near Douglas in Echo Park

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Three fatal hit-and-runs in three months on Sunset Boulevard have authorities seeking suspects and solutions - The Eastsider LA

Human Behavior

Guest Views: The barnstorming coronavirus humbles humans: We only think we’re in charge – Gazettextra

We walk the Earths crust, we erect vast cities, we boast of our achievements. We see ourselves as the mistresses and masters of our fate. Yet as John Lennon and other writers before him bluntly warned, life is what happens while were busy making plans.

The little living form that now roils humanity is a virus, one among millions of infectious agents that roam this planet. As the coronavirus claims rising numbers of lives, we humans see ourselves as under siege: Like its kin, this virus is without discrimination in selecting its victims; great wealth has its privileges, but immunity from epidemics isnt one of them.

Thus does nature once again remind us whos boss. And thus must todays only human species, homo sapiens, live up to its name: in Latin, wise man. Wisdom should dictate that we best survive natures anomalous moments when we look out for one anotherwhen our actions and precautions protect the common good. More succinctly, either we humans hang together or well hang alone.

All the sanitizers ever manufactured cannot isolate us from a pathogen that blithely travels among us, shrewdly dodging eradication while often stopping to replicate. We can, though, diminish this virus impact on a club with 8 billion members via the choices each of us makes one by one: Every handshake that instead becomes a bow or a fist bump, every cough thats buried inside an elbow, every food surface thats routinely wiped clean, demonstrates one more personal commitment to everyone elses health.

Think of coronavirus, then, not only as a nascent threat to human respiration but also as the latest eruption of nature that demands our urgent attention. Such eruptions, many of them terrifying, are always with us. Consider, for one example, the earthquake, a routine and sometimes devastating force. If you enrolled in Geology 101, chances are the prof quoted a maxim of early 20th century historian-philosopher Will Durant: Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

Nature relentlessly pummels us with these lethal challenges. We can debate whether the Great Chicago Fire was of human or bovine origin, but it could occur only because warm, dry weather severely dehydrated the American Midwest in October 1871.

Human behavior is shaping modern climate extremes. But by natures patient clock, such anomalies have been occurring for eons. Tornadoes and floods may shock us, but they shouldnt surprise us. Its because our human clocks run faster that we label as extraordinary whatever new-to-us event nature delivers during our brief time here.

In the category of health pandemics, the Spanish flu of 1918-19 has become todays go-to comparison for the still spreading coronavirus. In a time of comparatively little mobility, that century-ago disease took half a year to travel the globe. It infected one-third of the worlds population, or some 500 million people. It killed perhaps 50 million, maybe 100 million. Nobody knows with any certainty. And within 18 months, Spanish flu disappeared as inexplicably as it had appeared.

We have no idea what todays coronavirus has in store for us. Modern sanitation practices are more protective than those of a century ago, yet our world also is more densely settled. And even if a vaccine or other intervention thwarts todays virus, in time another will come along to menace us.

In our relative frailty, we humans are better suited to respect and try to adapt to natures assaults than we ever will be to eliminate them. Respect, and then do what we can to limit their spread and treat their victims.

The mundane precautions we take to protect ourselves and one another against coronavirus arent fail-safe. They do, though, give us todays best chance of surviving one more of natures perennial reminders: Were the Earths stewards, its temporary tenants. But we dont run the place.

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Guest Views: The barnstorming coronavirus humbles humans: We only think we're in charge - Gazettextra

Human Behavior

Prefer tea over coffee? It could be your genes, study finds – CNN

To examine genetic associations with food preferences, researchers from the Riken Center for Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS) and Osaka University in Japan studied the genetic data and food preferences of more than 160,000 people in Japan.

The research, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, found genetic links for 13 dietary habits including consumption of alcohol, other beverages and foods, and also complex human diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

"We know that what we eat defines what we are, but we found that what we are also defines what we eat," said Yukinori Okada, Senior Visiting Scientist at Riken IMS and professor at Osaka University, in a press release.

This involves grouping thousands of people together depending on whether they have a disease and looking at DNA markers called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, which can be used to predict the presence of that disease. If researchers find a SNP that is repeatedly associated with the disease group, they can assume that people with that genetic variation might be at risk for the disease.

Rather than looking at diseases, the Riken team examined dietary habits to find out if there were any markers that made people "at risk" for typically eating certain foods.

The researchers used data of more than 160,000 Japanese people from the BioBank Japan Project, launched in 2003 with a goal to provide evidence for the implementation of personalized medicine. The project collects DNA and clinical information, including items related to participants' lifestyles such as dietary habits, which were recorded through interviews and questionnaires.

They found nine genetic locations that were associated with consuming coffee, tea, alcohol, yogurt, cheese, natto (fermented soy beans), tofu, fish, vegetables and meat.

Variants responsible for the ability to taste bitter flavors were also observed. This association was found among people who liked to eat tofu; while those without the variant consumed less alcohol or none at all.

Those who ate more fish, natto, tofu and vegetables had a genetic variant that made them more sensitive to umami tastes, best described as savory or "meaty" flavors.

The main ingredients of the foods mattered, too -- for example, there were positive genetic correlations between eating yogurt and eating cheese, both milk-based foods.

In order to find whether any of these genetic markers associated with food were also linked with disease, the researchers conducted a phenome study.

The phenome comprises all the possible observable traits of DNA, known as phenotypes. Six of the genetic markers associated with food were also related to at least one disease phenotype, including several types of cancer as well as type 2 diabetes.

Nature vs. nurture: Food edition

Since the research studied only people native to Japan, the same genetic variations associated with food preferences are likely not applicable to populations across the globe. However, similar links have been discovered in different groups.

The study authored by Okada also didn't measure environmental factors. Our environment, demographics, socioeconomic status and culture -- such as whether we eat food from work or home; our age; how much money we make; and what our families eat -- are some of the biggest drivers of our food choices.

"These factors would weigh more than the genetics in some cases," said Dr. Jos Ordovs, director of Nutrition and Genomics at Tufts University in Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study.

"Something that sometimes we have felt is that the nutrition field has been focusing too much on nutrients rather than on foods," Ordovs said.

"Previous studies have been looking at genes that were associating with higher protein intake or higher fat intake or higher carbohydrate intake," Ordovs said. "But this study is more aligned with the fact that people eat foods. They don't just eat proteins, carbohydrates and fats. People tend to eat within a specific pattern."

Further research is needed to explain an exact balance between genetic predisposition and volition when it comes to food choices in different groups of people, but Okada suggests that by "estimating individual differences in dietary habits from genetics, especially the 'risk' of being an alcohol drinker, we can help create a healthier society."

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Human Behavior

Why Tennant Stock Tumbled Today – The Motley Fool

What happened

Shares ofTennant(NYSE:TNC) slipped on Monday, falling 10.7% by the time the market finally closed at 4 p.m. EDT. Driving down the industrial cleaning equipment company's stock was a significant sell-off in the stock market.

Today's market plunge, resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak and ahistoric sell-off in oil prices, didn't spare too many stocks. While the S&P 500 closed down 7.6% on the day, many stocks finished even lower, including Tennant.

Image source: Getty Images.

One of the drivers of the decline in the stock market is increasing concerns that the outbreak will cause a global economicrecession. If that happens, companies won't make as much money as expected this year, which makes their stock's less valuable.

In Tennant's case, it initially expected that 2020 would be a good year thanks to its strategic accomplishments in 2019. CEO Chris Killingstad stated in the company's fourth-quarter earnings release that "we are looking ahead with a real sense of excitement and anticipation amid the changes we have set in motion with our new enterprise strategy." That optimism led the company to forecast sales growth of 1.5%-2.5% this year, along with adjusted earnings-per-share growth of about 8% at the midpoint of its outlook.

However, a lot has changed since the company issued that guidance on Feb. 20. With the economy potentially heading into a recession over the outbreak, Tennent's results could come in at or below the low end of its outlook.

The market is pricing in the potential for a recession from the impact of the outbreak. However, it's unclear what impact the epidemic will have on the economy and human behavior. Tennant's stock, along with the rest of the market, might still have some more difficult days ahead.

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Why Tennant Stock Tumbled Today - The Motley Fool

Human Behavior

Many dogs are prone to anxiety, study finds – Medical News Today

Research assessing the behavior of dog breeds common in Finland has found that a significant proportion of our canine best friends live with some form of anxiety.

According to recent statistical reports, as many as 89.7 million dogs provided companionship to their human friends in the United States in 2017, the latest year for which data are available.

Dogs are some of the most popular pets around the world, and no wonder. Anecdotally, they are loyal, loving friends and a constant source of boundless affection and good fun.

Yet, much like humans, our canine pals can also face troubles such as stress and anxiety.

In fact, according to a new study from the University of Helsinki in Finland, dogs are particularly prone to a wide range of anxiety-like traits.

In the recent study, first author Milla Salonen and her colleagues analyzed the behaviors that 13,715 pet dogs from Finland belonging to 264 different breeds exhibited. Their findings appear in Scientific Reports.

The researchers asked the dogs owners to fill in questionnaires surveying behaviors that related to seven anxiety-related traits. These were noise sensitivity, general fear, fear of surfaces, impulsivity or lack of attention, compulsive behaviors, aggression, and behaviors relating to separation anxiety.

By looking at the survey data, the investigators found that 72.5% of the dogs expressed anxiety-like behaviors, according to their owners.

Of the total number of dogs, 32% had noise sensitivity, meaning that they were frightened of at least one noise. Among noise-sensitive dogs, the most common fear was that of sounds associated with fireworks this fear had a prevalence of 26%, the researchers write.

General fearfulness affected 29% of the dogs in the study. Specifically, 17% of dogs showed fear of other dogs, 15% fear of strangers, and 11% fear of novel situations, the authors write.

The least common anxious behaviors, according to the surveys, were separation-related behaviors, which affected 5% of dogs, and aggression, which owners reported in 14% of dogs.

Some anxiety-like behaviors, the researchers also found, seem to become more pronounced as dogs age. These include noise sensitivity especially being frightened of thunder as well as fear of heights and anxiety around walking on certain types of surfaces, such as metal grids.

However, judging by their owners reports, younger dogs were more likely to have problematic behaviors relating to separation anxiety, such as urinating on the floor or damaging furniture.

Younger dogs also appeared to be more likely than older canines to be impulsive.

There were also differences between the two biological sexes, with males being more likely to show aggression and signs of impulsivity and females having a higher tendency to display fear.

Different dog breeds were also likely to display different types of anxiety-related behaviors.

The researchers stated that much in accordance with what previous studies have suggested Lagotto Romagnolos, Wheaten terriers, and mixed breed dogs had the highest prevalence of noise sensitivity, while miniature schnauzers and Staffordshire bull terriers were less sensitive to noises.

Spanish water dogs, Shetland sheepdogs, and mixed breed dogs were the canines in which fearfulness was most common. More specifically, fear of surfaces and fear of heights were most prevalent in rough collie and mixed breed dogs.

Large breeds and small breeds also differed in terms of anxiety-like behaviors. For example, among the miniature schnauzers in this study, 10.6% showed aggression toward strangers, compared with only 0.4% of Labrador retrievers.

But why are such anxious behaviors so common in dogs? The researchers cannot say for sure, but they hypothesize that the dogs genetic makeup may have something to do with their predisposition to different types of anxiety.

Behavior has a major genetic component, they write, adding that [s]ome genomic areas and loci are associated with problematic behavior, including compulsion, fear, and noise sensitivity.

Yet they note that environmental factors, such as the training that dogs receive, most likely interact with genetic predispositions, leading to or suppressing certain behaviors.

As anxiety can impair welfare, and problematic behavior may be an indication of poor welfare, efforts should be made to decrease the prevalence of these canine anxieties, the researchers point out in their study paper. They go on to suggest that:

Breeding policies may help to improve dog welfare, as could changes in the living environment.

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Many dogs are prone to anxiety, study finds - Medical News Today

Human Behavior

Why robotic process automation (RPA) is the perfect technology for logistics – FreightWaves

Consider the time you spend reading an email, combing through it to harvest relevant information to put into an operating system, and then taking the resulting data from the operating system to craft a response. Email is tedious and requires a significant commitment of time time that brokers could use to cultivate relationships with customers and think strategically about business growth.

Technology is flooding the freight industry, leveraging apps to streamline singular tasks like load matching, and checking in and paying carriers tasks that not too long ago were completed manually. The apps are coded to perform specific, limited functions, but when you consider a task like email, theres more nuance and variation. Frankly, its more human.

A fast-growing technology that imitates human behavior and has taken root in the financial services and hospitality industries is slowly making its way into logistics. Robotic process automation (RPA) is an intelligent automation software that uses machine learning, natural language processing and artificial intelligence to mimic the rote tasks a human performs on a daily basis, whether its reading email or quoting rates. Eventually, RPA technology could provide every broker an assistant to perform lower-level tasks so they can so they can focus on high-level strategy.

RPA is a rapid development environment, so what we can do with RPA that is different than any kind of automation in the past or robotics in the past is apply rapid development tools to fairly quickly build a bot, said Joel McGinley, managing director at Hubtek, a staffing and technology company based in Miami and Medellin, Colombia. We can create a bot in less than a day depending on the complexity of the bot. That same automation, using other tools, would take maybe a month with lots of training and testing.

RPA can integrate with any existing technology infrastructure, regardless of its sophistication or whether the multiple systems it interfaces with integrate with one another. For Amit Bhutani, sales director at Automation Anywhere, an RPA platform based out of San Jose, California, this is one of RPAs biggest advantages.

You tell the bots to go retrieve information from five different systems, they will do it, Bhutani said. Bots dont need systems talking to each other in order to operate. Large companies might have two or three TMS systems at least, and most of the time, they dont integrate with one another, but it does not matter to RPA. Also, users dont need to know Java or C++, this is all user-friendly interface, drag-and-drop functionality.

Not only can RPA be built and implemented quickly, it allows a company to grow while maintaining and enhancing the existing workforce. So RPA can be thought of as a tool for workforce optimization, rather than workforce replacement.

Data entry can be very laborious and the human being is prone to errors, especially with high volume, McGinley said. A robot can handle that entry very efficiently, very quickly and never makes an error. The robot works 24 hours, 7 days a week, never asks for a raise, never has any office drama. So theyre kind of an assistant. Imagine if we could give every worker in this industry an assistant to increase their productivity.

Companies within the logistics industry are positioned well for RPA technology, not just because theyre striving for competitive advantage, but also because of the industrys sophisticated interdependencies. RPA can help the labor pool, particularly the new, tech-inclined generation of workers, pursue work of higher value, reducing busy work and the training it entails. The end result: greater employee satisfaction and higher retention rates for companies. RPA could also improve other areas of the industry, including shipment scheduling, inventory tracking, customer visibility and invoicing.

RPA enablescompaniesto offer a better quality of service while freeing up labor capacity to engage more closely with their customers says Anubhav Saxena, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Alliances at Automation Anywhere.Shipping and logistic companies can nowofferpremium services to more customers whileprovidingbetter customer satisfaction which helps raise their top line.

McGinley says many logistics companies worry their scale wont support a technology like RPA, but once they see the capabilities and costs of the program, the resistance dissipates. Hubtek has recently partnered with Automation Anywhere to make automation more cost-accessible to logistics companies.

While Automation Anywhere has been innovating its business for 16 years and has deployed 1.8 million bots, Hubtek is one of Automation Anywheres first partners in transportation. Utilizing a partnership like this prevents companies from taking on the cost of licensing, so $10 million-$30 million companies can compete with billion-dollar companies that can invest heavily in technology.

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Why robotic process automation (RPA) is the perfect technology for logistics - FreightWaves

Human Behavior

CDC recommends not touching your face to stop spread of COVID-19. It’s harder than it looks. – Fox17

ALLENDALE, Mich. Washing your hands is important. The CDC recommends 20 seconds of scrubbing to prevent the spread of illnesses such as Coronavirus.

Health officials are also recommending people try to stop touching their faces.

Its just a nervous habit I guess, Grand Valley State University student Alexa Philbrick said

Stopping touching your face is easier said than done. Sunday, FOX 17 tested it for ourselves. We observed two groups of Grand Valley State University students for 20 minutes each to see just how often they touched their faces without realizing.

Yeah, I know I do. I mean, I even do it when Im driving. So its just a habit, GVSU student Adrian Hall said.

We told the students we were observing them looking for "a certain human behavior," but didn't tell the students what specifically we were looking for.

The coronavirus has been all over the news and stuff, so I assumed it had something to do with sickness, Alexa Philbrick said.

It happened again, and again, and again. Nearly every student we watched touched their face. It's a hard habit to break. But the first step is to realize you're doing it.

Ive been a lot more conscious of it, now, just because of whats going on, GVSU student Viviana Rubio said.

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CDC recommends not touching your face to stop spread of COVID-19. It's harder than it looks. - Fox17

Human Behavior

‘Devs’: Here’s why it is important to comprehend a universe without free will to understand the Fx series – MEAWW

Can everything be explained? Is everything we do, every action we have taken up until this very point (and beyond it) be necessitated by antecedent events and conditions? Is there no free will; only the mere illusion of it? Alex Garland (of Annihilation, and Ex Machina fame) grapples with these questions in his new Fx series Devs.

In an interview last year, Garland had said, One was getting my head around this principle of determinism, which basically says that everything that happens in the world is based on cause and effect. So nothing happens that isnt the result of a prior cause. And that has all sorts of implications for us. One is it takes away free will, but it also means that if you had a computer powerful enough you would be able to use cause and effect and use determinism in order to not just predict the future but also understand the past.

And that, essentially, is what is at the core of the plot of Devs -- the principle of determinism and a futuristic Silicon Valley company that is using this principle and advanced technology to possibly predict and even control human behavior. Does it sound a little bit like an extended Black Mirror episode? Only if one takes a shallow look at it. Yes, the very basis of the show, if it has to be boiled down to a reduction, is technophobia. Unlike the Charlie Brooker anthology series, however, the fear here is not just human intent and capabilities in the time of powerful technology. Nor is it lukewarm tales of the same human failures and flaws over and over again. Rather, its a more philosophical look at the potential of such technology and the pragmatism of fearing something like that.

Consequently, determinism and fatalism are very important to understand. Essentially, the roots of the notion of determinism surely lie in the idea that everything can, in principle, be explained, or that everything that is, has a sufficient reason for being and being as it is, and not otherwise.

Pierre-Simon Laplace, the French polymath and scholar, wrote in 1820: We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes.

In the eyes of Garland, this core philosophy is what makes everything dangerous. If every decision flows in a fixed path, and free will is a lie, then surely someone with appropriate means would take advantage of that. But there lies the philosophical sinkhole of fatalism. If determinism holds in our world, then there are no probabilities. In which case, the technological dominance the show promises in its plot is essentially inevitable. Mind-bending, isnt it?

Devs airs exclusively on FX on Hulu, every Thursday at 12 am.

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'Devs': Here's why it is important to comprehend a universe without free will to understand the Fx series - MEAWW

Human Behavior

Why Is The Stock Market Slipping? – TheStreet

On February 19 it looked like the stock market would break a new ceiling. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was headed to 30,000 and nothing could stand in its way.

Then the coronavirus stood in its way.

Over one week of trading, between February 21 and February 28, the market lost 3,500 points. Since then stocks have rallied and slipped depending largely on the day of the week. On two separate days (Thursday, Feb. 27 and Thursday, March 5) the market posted its largest single-day losses since the Great Recession. The question is why?

The connection between COVID-19 and stock market prices is not immediately obvious. The industries most likely to suffer, such as airlines and hospitality, will almost certainly bounce back once the crisis has passed. Others have little, if any, apparent connection to infectious disease. Consumers arent immediately likely to need fewer computers or drink less orange juice in the wake of the coronavirus. Yet traders have sold those stocks anyway, unloading them at bargain-bin prices.

This happens. Sometimes.

A major crisis can have unpredictable effects on the stock market. Sometimes traders shrug off the event like it never happened. When Hurricanes Katrina and Maria made landfall in 2005 and 2018, respectively, the stock market largely didnt notice. On the other hand, shortly after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti the S&P 500 lost 6.6% of its value, and the attacks on September 11, 2001 led to a 11.6% decrease.

At times, the market seems to ignore the headlines. Other times it seems to react with fear and panic, surging money out of stocks and into safe assets. Behind this unpredictability, often enough, is fear. Fear of unpredictability; fear of changing fundamentals; and, perhaps more than anything else, simple human fear for personal safety.

Its about uncertainty, said Randy Frederick, Vice President of Trading and Derivatives at Charles SchwabCorporation(SCHW) - Get Report. Its about not knowing.

In a broad, general sense, its that human nature is such that when were surprised by anything that we didnt expect, our natural reaction is to react in a negative fashion. When something happens, and it can be anything really, our natural reaction is to hit the sell button The coronavirus may or may not be any more dangerous, any more contagious, than the common flu, but its new,Frederick said.

Investors, especially the professional and institutional investors who hold most of the stock markets assets, try to trade on certainties. They rarely like to gamble, instead preferring to move based on a sense that they know where the market is going and how it will get there. This is why firms invest so much money in technical analysis. Modern traders work with numbers, assessing risk and reward based on enormous amounts of data.

Uncertainty undermines all of this.

When natural or political disasters strike, they create questions. Will supply chains remain stable and predictable? Will consumers still go out and spend money, or will they have jobs at all? Will lending tighten up? How will this affect property values and, as a result, the investments of both individuals and lending institutions? Economic conditions that, before, had been relatively well known suddenly become unclear.

In turn, that can make any investment position far less clear than it was before.

Why do we buy stocks? said Frederick. We buy stocks on the prospect that the company will be profitable, and more specifically that it will be profitable in the future. If the coronavirus keeps people out of restaurants and out of stores where they might buy a brand of soda, its possible that companys stock will go down over the next quarter, so maybe I dont want to hold that stock anymore.

Thats the rational for any stock. You look at the prospects for the future and, if youre optimistic, you own the stock.

Uncertainty in a stock is measured by what investors call volatility. High volatility means that traders just dont know whats going to happen. Prices could go up or down; the only confidence they have is that something will probably change.

Volatility means movement, said Lubos Pastor, a professor with the University of Chicagos Booth School of Business. It does not mean movement up, or movement down. It means movement in both directions, and I think the last three or four days are a perfect example of that.

In times of high volatility investors tend to look for one of two things: more safety, or more rewards. Its a trading metric called the discount rate; how much do they discount the present value of the stock based on the risks of holding it. That discount rate drives risk premiums, how much return do investors want in order to hold what they now consider to be a riskier asset?

Basically in times of trouble people tend to apply higher discount rates [when they] value stocks, Lubos said. Its a combination of two things. One is our attitudes toward risk, and the other is our perception of risk. The perception of risk is now higher. We now perceive stocks to be riskier than before because we just dont know how stocks are going to play out.

As to changes in attitude toward risk, Lubos said, people often become more risk averse when they hear about major things like a virus.

When the stock market falls in the wake of a political event or natural disaster, it reflects simple uncertainty on the part of traders. They dont feel like they know whats going to happen next, so they change their risk/reward calculations. Stocks that made sense previously no longer meet the new discount rates that firms apply to their position.

This is part of whats going on.

Its not that bloodless though. At the same time as investors run the new reality through their models and numbers, theyre also human beings. They tend to react just as emotionally as anyone else when frightened.

You have to think about human behavior, said Mark Hamrick, senior economic advisor with Bankrate.We tend to think that a lot of this is scientific, and the scientific piece is the sort of unknowable role that algorithms and machines play But with respect to where human behavior is involved, we know that its not an exaggeration to say that fear and greed help to drive a fair amount of market activity.

Here we are with what is truly the textbook example of a black swan, which ultimately is an event that was not largely expected and certainly wasnt on the radar screens for anyones stock forecasts for 2020, Hamrick said. Ultimately, its an emotional response. I think that those of us that do step back from all of this try to remind ourselves, this too shall pass.

Investors get scared when a new virus appears. They get scared when a hurricane flattens communities, when an earthquake shakes apart buildings or when a terrorist attack threatens their homes. Ultimately, even more than the technical analysis of risk vs. reward, short term positions vs. long, this may be the clearest explanation for why the stock market dips and when.

Like the rest of us, traders seek safety when theyre afraid.

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Why Is The Stock Market Slipping? - TheStreet