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The Perception of Risk
Book

The Perception of Risk

Paul Slovic
Earthscan, 2000
First Edition: 2000

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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

This dense collection of chronologically-ordered essays provides an excellent overview of research into how people think about risk. The traditional assumption governing public policy decisions has been that people are basically rational and assess risk based on logic and facts. But people do not always make rational assessments of risk or decide with cool detachment upon the best risk-adjusted courses of action. Most people lack a sophisticated understanding of probability. Even many scientists who understand statistics fail to act according to their knowledge. This book contains some fascinating material even though the presentation is lengthy, technical, academic and dry. The authors of these collected essays (Paul Slovic is a co-author on each essay) do not pretend to write for a general audience. They are clearly addressing specialists with a professional interest in the details of experiment design, controls and such. Nonetheless, getAbstract believes that the patient, persevering layperson will find that a worthwhile harvest rewards the effort of plowing through this tome.

Take-Aways

  • People are not dispassionately rational in their approach to risk.
  • Even experts allow themselves to be swayed by “irrational” biases.
  • Availability bias is the tendency to over-weight recently seen or remembered risks.

About the Author

Paul Slovic is president of Decision Research and professor of psychology at the University of Oregon.

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