How Risky Is It, Really?

Why do some people see risk as a stimulating challenge to be tackled, while others perceive mostly what they have to lose? In light of the extensive research conducted in recent years in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, sociology and economics, David Ropeik tries to understand how our perception of risk is formed. If there is one lesson to take away from this book, it’s that our fears are often disconnected from reality.
The author goes through a number of biases that influence and distort our perception of risk in one direction or the other. Our ancestral survival instinct and flawed intuition are relatively well-known sources of mistakes. More interesting is the analysis of the psychological factors that make individuals assess the same risk so differently. Whether a risk is natural or caused by man, sudden or chronic, new or familiar, fair or unfair, is taken into account to reinforce or minimize our perception of risk. Indeed, when we feel we have some control over a situation, our fear drops, but not the risk. For example, keeping both hands on the wheel while talking on a cell phone with a hands-free kit may feel safer than holding the phone, but in fact we are just as likely to be distracted by the conversation.
There are quick quizzes throughout the book to show how biased our judgment really is when it comes to risk. Yet, understanding why we perceive risk as we do is not an end in itself. The author’s primary goal is to provide ways to make risk perception more reliable, in order to keep people from taking inordinate risks or conversely being so conservative that they miss out on precious opportunities.
This pragmatic book sheds interesting light on reconciling initiative and risk management.