Individual Risks Perception : Risk Perception

Risk management is a continual process that is used by every person throughout their day. It is an autonomous activity, that when an individual is presented with a situation their brain assesses the associated risk and quickly makes a determination as to whether that risk is acceptable; based on the potential benefit or the possibility of an adverse outcome. For just one person, this can be a difficult process and without preparation, the outcome is reliant on chance, as in a toss of a coin. This describes a basic reactionary process; the goal is to develop a proactive stance that eliminates, mitigates, or defers the effects of unknown and unexpected disruption events.

For many people risk is an accepted part of everyday life. Every day activities such as catching the bus, travelling on holiday, playing football, setting up home and starting a family all carry some element of risk.

* There are three (3) schools of thought regarding risk. The first considers the positive and negative aspects of risk, but sees them as separate. The second group believes that there are benefits from treating threats and opportunities together, while the third school does not label uncertainties, but addresses uncertainty as part of “doing the job.” Argue the value of having a risk strategy despite the cost associated with it. Include an example to support

When we delve into the word 'risk ', we find that it has a multitude of meanings, and that it is nowhere near as clear and precise as the advocates of traditional risk assessment assert, for example Hansson (2002) identifies five different common uses for the word risk, and Ekberg points out a "proliferation of risk definitions" and a whole range of different understandings of risk (2007 p345).

Risk perception is not a matter of chance nor happens randomly, there are elements that determine how we perceive risk. An individual’s perception or assessment of risk is based on a combination of hazard and outrage factors. When present, outrange often takes on strong emotional overtones. It influences an individual to react emotionally. Out rage also tends to distort perceived hazard.

Beck explains that our society, encapsulated within an era of advanced modernity, is dominated by the pervasiveness of risks. Bell provides an in-depth examination of the relationship and tension between ‘rational’ conceptions of risk and the democracy of knowledge. Rather than a new feature of modern industrial society, Bell argues that the problem of using wording like "risk" represents a modern conceptual language for discussing the age-old problems of uncertainty and control. The modern day thought process in regards to hazards and their risk, is not about the number of hazards we face or the degree of uncertainty but rather the language we use to think and talk about them. Bell titles this as highly rationalistic (p. 238). Bell states

To date there has been a contestation around risk approach. One approach is so called realism. The exponents of realism propose that risk is the outcome of probability

The following paper will base on my chosen articles on our climate. I will provide a summary of each article. I will also compare and contrast the risk perceptions that are presented in each article I will identify any environmental stressors that are related to the environmental risk. It will be concluded with a discussion of my own risk perception of the issue. By the end of the paper you will be familiar with different affects that the environment has on us and risks that we take every day just breathing.

Consequently this lead to research into risk, being adopted through an ‘artefact’ approach, framing risk as a static, objective reality pliable to measurement and probabilistic calculations (Horlick-Jones, 1998). Within the social world this has been

The word “risk” means the possibility of suffering a harmful event. Risk taking can bring either positive or negative result because anytime we take risks in life, there is a possibility of loss which can cause tension. There are a lot of people who take big risks and appear not to be affected by them. But, many of us feel very uneasy when faced with risk-taking; we may become worried about the risk. Although some people are content in life by just playing it safe and not courting any

This construct describes an individual’s willingness to change a behavior based upon their belief of how likely they are to contract some disease or illness. The more an individual feels he or she is at risk, the more likely they are to make a behavior change in order to prevent negative outcomes. Referring back to the previous example, if a person has a family history of cardiovascular disease, it is likely they are going to make healthy eating decisions and exercise regularly in order to prevent the contraction of heart disease. Although this is true, this construct can also work against the user in reverse. When an individual believes that they are at a lesser risk for a certain condition, behavior changes will not be made to prevent negative outcomes in the future. For example, if one has not had a family history of heart disease he or she may believe that practicing healthy eating habits and physical activity is futile. Such mindsets typically lead to unhealthy behaviors (Hayden,

Prospect theory is an important alternative descriptive theory for decision-making under unreliable situation (Kahneman and Tversky 1979), which includes real life selection and psychological analysis between choices that involve risk. Prospect theory, which efforts to explain individual make decisions between risky replacements based on the value of potential gains and losses (Wakker 2010), advanced from expected utility theory, which explains that investors want to maximize expected utility of wealth when unclearly situations (Blavatskyy 2007). According to Kahneman and Tversky (1992), more recent researches perceived nonlinear preferences in choices that do not involve definite events in prospective theory. The concept of framing effect refers description invariances (Kahneman and Tversky 1992). To be specific, individual always makes the same decision in identical choice conditions. Also, decision makers have tendency to

The subjective risk is uncertainty based on one’s mental condition or state of mind. Accordingly, the objective risk is measurable and statistical; the subjective risk is personal and not easily measured.

Applying the utility theory seems a rational choice as it can reflect the decision maker’s attitude toward risk. Still problems arise when the decision is made by more than one person. Based on their experiences within General Motors, Michael W. Kusnic and Daniel Owen have found that when there were more than one decision makers, it was less

On the basis of those elements above, risk attitudes of a person will be very different