Poltergeist bias

The results of this little online poll published by a Polish blogging platform salon24.pl show, I think, two cognitive biases at work all at once. The survey question is: What do you think the state of highway and railway infrastructure in Poland is the result of? Here are answer choices: 1) Inherent inability of Polish people to complete projects; 2) Incompetence of the Polish government; 3) Lack of privatization; 4) Lack of long-term strategic thinking among politicians; 5) Intentional actions aimed at destroying Polish economic potential and 6) Don't know. Of about 500 respondents, 19% think the sorry state of Polish transport infrastructure is due to politicians' lack of long-term thinking, 35% think it's because of general government incompetence, and also 35% think that it's due to malicious actions of some unnamed forces.

I realize this is not a representative sample of the population, and that the questions are poorly designed, but I still consider this anecdotal evidence of how strongly ingrained what I call the "Poltergeist bias" is. Essentially, Poltergeist bias is the belief that there's a malicious agent behind every misfortune. There are no accidents or coincidents; if something goes wrong, it's because some evil mind wanted it this way. Another bias lurking behind these answers is something I'm not sure has a proper name, but essentially amounts to grossly misjudging default probabilities. Highways and railroads don't appear by themselves. The default state of the world is one without roads or train tracks. It is also much harder to build things than to not build them. Thus, it is much more likely that the lack of infrastructure is due to the appropriate agencies not being up to the task rather than to intentional and malignant forces actively preventing building from taking place.