Risk perception: it's personal.

Abstract

Risk perception is a highly personal process of decision making, based on an individual’s frame of reference developed over a lifetime, among many other factors. A body of research from the past several decades makes it clear that when it come to making decisions about health and safety, we don’t always worry the most about the most pressing threats.1,2 Risk consultant David Ropeik calls this the “risk perception gap.” In the face of contradictory information, people must rely on their instincts as much as the facts to size up potential threats. On the surface, this risk perception gap may appear to be a result of ignorance. However, experts including Ropeik, University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic, and many more say that, in fact, it’s a natural extension of our hard-wired ability to quickly size up threats, an ability that draws on much more than facts alone. “The older view is that the public is emotional and hence irrational,” Slovic says. “But that’s not correct. Emotions are an extraordinarily sophisticated form of intelligence,” he says, “born out of millennia of quickly assessing high risks.”