Premium
Cognitive Components of Risk Ratings
Author(s) -
Winterfeldt Detlof,
John Richard S.,
Borcherding Katrin
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
risk analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 130
eISSN - 1539-6924
pISSN - 0272-4332
DOI - 10.1111/j.1539-6924.1981.tb01428.x
Subject(s) - odds , demography , risk perception , psychology , poison control , cognition , sample (material) , risk assessment , human factors and ergonomics , suicide prevention , occupational safety and health , injury prevention , environmental health , forensic engineering , perception , gerontology , statistics , medicine , logistic regression , engineering , mathematics , computer security , computer science , psychiatry , sociology , chemistry , chromatography , pathology , neuroscience
This study examined what lay people mean when they judge the “risk” of activities that involve the potential for accidental fatalities (e.g., hang gliding, living near a nuclear reactor). A sample of German and American students rated the “overall risk” of 14 such activities and provided 3 fatality estimates: the number of fatalities in an “average year,” the individual yearly fatality probability (or odds), and the number of fatalities in a “disastrous accident.” Subjects' fatality estimates were reasonably accurate and only moderately influenced by attitudes towards nuclear energy. Individual fatality probability correlated most highly with intuitive risk ratings. Disaster estimates correlated positively with risk ratings for those activities that had a low fatality probability and a relatively high disaster potential. Annual average fatality rates did not correlate with risk ratings at all. These findings were interpreted in terms of a two‐dimensional cognitive structure. Subjective notions of risk were determined primarily by the personal chance of death; for some activities, “disaster potential” played a secondary role in shaping risk perception.