It is a quirk of human nature that we have a hard time contemplating abstract notions of danger, especially when it is introduced to us by others. In the simplest of examples, imagine a sign, placed next to a surface, that reads “Wet Paint.” Out of 100 people, how many do you think will touch the surface to see if it is indeed wet? The answer is always more than 50%.
This condition has a name, unsurprisingly called “Wet Paint Syndrome.” It springs from the idea that, when confronted with a situation demanding compliance, there will always be a proportion of a population that will reject the instruction, for one of a few reasons:
