![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
Humans perceive and act on risk in two fundamental ways. Risk as feelings refers to individuals' instinctive and intuitive reactions to danger. Risk as analysis brings logic, reason, and scientific deliberation to bear on risk management. Reliance on risk as feelings is described as “the affect heuristic.” This article traces the development of this heuristic and discusses some of the important ways that it impacts how people perceive and evaluate risk.
Recommended Reading
| Gigerenzer, G. (2004). Dread risk, September 11, and fatal traffic accidents. Psychological Science, 15, 286–287. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
| Loewenstein, G.F., Weber, E.U., Hsee, C.K., Welch, E.S. (2001). Risk as feelings. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 267–286. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
| Slovic, P. (2000). The perception of risk. London: Earthscan Ltd. Google Scholar | |
| Slovic, P., Finucane, M.L., Peters, E., MacGregor, D.G. (2004). Risk as analysis and risk as feelings. Risk Analysis, 24, 1–12. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI |
REFERENCES
| Alhakami, A.S., Slovic, P. (1994). A psychological study of the inverse relationship between perceived risk and perceived benefit. Risk Analysis, 14, 1085–1096. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
| Bodenhausen, G.V., Gabriel, S., Lineberger, M. (2000). Sadness and susceptibility to judgmental bias: The case of anchoring. Psychological Science, 11, 320–323. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
| Denes-Raj, V., Epstein, S. (1994). Conflict between intuitive and rational processing: When people behave against their better judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 819–829. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
| Epstein, S. (1994). Integration of the cognitive and the psychodynamic unconscious. American Psychologist, 49, 709–724. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
| Fetherstonhaugh, D., Slovic, P., Johnson, S.M., Friedrich, J. (1997). Insensitivity to the value of human life: A study of psychophysical numbing. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 14, 283–300. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
| Finucane, M.L., Alhakami, A., Slovic, P., Johnson, S.M. (2000). The affect heuristic in judgments of risks and benefits. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 13, 1–17. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
| Fischhoff, B., Slovic, P., Lichtenstein, S., Read, S., Combs, B. (1978). How safe is safe enough? A psychometric study of attitudes towards technological risks and benefits. Policy Sciences, 9, 127–152. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
| Lerner, J.S., Gonzalez, R.M., Small, D.A., Fischhoff, B. (2003). Effects of fear and anger on perceived risks of terrorism: A national field experiment. Psychological Science, 14, 144–150. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
| Lerner, J.S., Keltner, D. (2000). Beyond valence: Toward a model of emotion-specific influences on judgment and choice. Cognition & Emotion, 14, 473–493. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
| Loewenstein, G.F., Weber, E.U., Hsee, C.K., Welch, E.S. (2001). Risk as feelings. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 267–286. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
| Peters, E., Burraston, B., Mertz, C.K. (2004). An emotion-based model of risk perception and stigma susceptibility: Cognitive appraisals of emotion, affective reactivity, worldviews, and risk perceptions in the generation of technological stigma. Risk Analysis, 24, 1349–1367. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
| Peters, E., Lipkus, I., Diefenbach, M.A. (2006). The functions of affect in health communications and in the construction of health preferences. Journal of Communication, 56, S140–S162. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
| Peters, E., Västfjäll, D., Slovic, P., Mertz, C.K., Mazzocco, K., Dickert, S. (2006). Numeracy and decision making. Psychological Science, 17, 407–413. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
| Rottenstreich, Y., Hsee, C.K. (2001). Money, kisses and electric shocks: On the affective psychology of probability weighting. Psychological Science, 12, 158–190. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
| Schwarz, N., Clore, G.L. (1988). How do I feel about it? Informative functions of affective states. In Fiedler, K., Forgas, J. (Eds.), Affect, cognition, and social behavior (pp. 44–62). Toronto, ON, Canada: Hogrefe International. Google Scholar | |
| Slovic, P., Finucane, M.L., Peters, E., MacGregor, D.G. (2002). The affect heuristic. In Gilovich, T., Griffin, D., Kahneman, D. (Eds.), Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 397–420). New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Slovic, P., Monahan, J., MacGregor, D.G. (2000). Violence risk assessment and risk communication: The effects of using actual cases, providing instruction, and employing probability versus frequency formats. Law and Human Behavior, 24, 271–296. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
| Sunstein, C.R. (2003). Terrorism and probability neglect. The Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 26, 121–136. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI |
