Risk perception

Risk perception is the subjective judgement that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk.^[1][2][3] Risk perceptions often differ from statistical assessments of risk since they are affected by a wide range of affective (emotions, feelings, moods, etc.), cognitive (gravity of events, media coverage, risk-mitigating measures, etc.), contextual (framing of risk information, availability of alternative information sources, etc.), and individual (personality traits, previous experience, age, etc.) factors.^[3] Several theories have been proposed to explain why different people make different estimates of the dangerousness of risks.^[4][5] Three major families of theory have been developed: psychology approaches (heuristics and cognitive), anthropology/sociology approaches (cultural theory) and interdisciplinary approaches (social amplification of risk framework).