A Description–Experience Framework of the Psychology of Risk

Abstract

The modern world holds countless risks for humanity, both large-scale and intimately personal—from cyberwarfare, pandemics, and climate change to sexually transmitted diseases and drug use and abuse. Many risks have prompted institutional, regulatory, and technological countermeasures, the success of which depends to some extent on how individuals learn about the risks in question. We distinguish between two powerful but imperfect teachers of risk. First, people may learn by consulting symbolic and descriptive material, such as warnings, statistics, and images. More often than not, however, a risk’s fluidity defies precise description. Second, people may learn about risks through personal experience. Responses to risk can differ systematically depending on whether people learn through one mode, both, or neither. One reason for these differences—and by no means the only reason—is the discrepancy in the cognitive impact that rare events (typically the risk event) and common events (typically the nonoccurrence of the risk event) have on the decision maker. We propose a description–experience framework that highlights not only the impact of each mode of learning but also the effects of their interplay on individuals’ and collectives’ responses to risk. We outline numerous research questions and themes suggested by this framework.