Understanding and Communicating Risk: A Psychological Overview

Risk is an inescapable fact of life. We are all confronted by risks; we all have to take risks whether we like it or not — whether we even know it or not. Although there has been a considerable effort to understand how — and how well — people react to threats there are still many unresolved arguments and uncertainties about the nature of risk. How should risk be defined? How should uncertain threats be classified and responded to? How do people intuitively construe risk? This paper does not provide any definitive answers to these questions but offers a precis of some of the research that has offered illuminating or provocative insights.

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