Abstract: Scare buying phenomena occurred in China recently can be explained by the dual-process model (e.g., Jacoby, 1991). Human information process is generally influenced simultaneously by controlled and automatic processes, and many psychological findings suggest that emotional arousal impairs controlled process but increases automatic process. Under uncertainty and risk conditions, one’s behavioral response is usually fast or automatic. In this situation, pre-trainings and well-learned behaviors will dominate one’s response. During SARS broke out and spread in China, many panic legends were communicated amongst citizens and people’s emotional arousal was further enhanced. So, buying as quickly as possible to avoid the severe risk becomes the dominant choice at the huge scale across residents, which ultimately results in the emerging of the scare buying.

Key words: crisis situation, human cognition and emotion, panic legends, automatic and dominant behavior