> If a friend tells you about getting mugged in a foreign country, that story is more likely to affect how safe you feel traveling to that country than reading a page of abstract crime statistics will.

One can make an argument that this is reasonable. I share many common interests with my friends, and so if I were to visit that foreign country I'd probably be interested in the same things in that country that my friend was interested in, and so would likely be traveling to the same places my friend visited. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to weigh my friend's experiences in that country higher than statistics derived from the combined experiences of everyone who goes to that country.