Connecting Research and Practice: How People Think About Risks

Life is filled with decisions that involve risk, the uncertain possibility of something bad happening. How do you decide whether to eat genetically modified food (Hunt & Wald, 2020)? How do you decide whether to evacuate during a flood or hurricane (Carr et al., 2016; Ruginski et al., 2016)? How do you decide whether to get vaccinated (Krause et al., 2020; Vanherle et al., 2023)? Many risks in today’s world involve science, meaning that science communications need to understand the factors that influence people’s risk perceptions. Most importantly, risks are not just about facts—they’re also about values (Hansson, 2010).
 
Scientists and engineers often evaluate risk based on quantitative measures of probabilities and severities. But non-specialists perceive risks more in terms of qualitative and emotional characteristics. People tend to view a risk as larger if it is unknown (new, not observable, exposure is not obvious, effects are delayed, etc.) and dreaded (uncontrollable, catastrophic, inequitable, exposure is involuntary, etc.) than if it is known and not dreaded (Slovic, 1992).
 
Mental shortcuts (heuristics) are important, too. If you know someone affected by a given issue, you’re likely to view it as riskier than you would if the victims were statistical (Siegrist & Árvai, 2020). People also tend to think that “natural” options are less risky than “unnatural” ones—for example, people have more positive opinions of “natural gas” than “methane gas,” even though methane is the main component of “natural gas” (Lacroix et al., 2021). People’s worldviews, personality traits, and cultures sometimes influence risk perceptions, depending on the context (Siegrist & Árvai, 2020).
 
If you’re communicating about an action with one main risk and several smaller risks, it might be better to focus on the largest risk instead of listing all of them. For example, a medicine with a potential side effect of seizures is viewed as less risky when it has the additional potential side effects of congestion and fatigue (Khan & Kupor, 2016). The flip side is true too—an action with one large potential benefit is more attractive to us than an action with the same large potential benefit plus several smaller potential benefits.
 
For a good overview of the social science research on risk perceptions, check out Siegrist & Árvai, 2020. Feel free to reach out to Scott Hershberger if you’re having trouble accessing any article mentioned here.