Many of our daily activities involve some level of risk, be it our work, our finances or our health. But how is risk perceived in society and how do individuals think about risk? “There is a lot of scientific interest in the phenomenon of exposure,” say researcher Dr Dirk Wolf and Professor Rui Mata from the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Basel. “But disciplines such as psychology, sociology and economics define it in different ways,” explains Dirk Wolf.
According to Wolf, the meaning of risk can vary from person to person depending on the goal and life experience. He feels it is important to understand how different people think about risk, for example, to measure attitudes towards new technologies or social challenges.
To investigate this, researchers have developed a new method based on word associations and an algorithmic process that represents risk for different groups and individuals.
An algorithm was used to generate a semantic network of risk from 36,100 associations. It identified the following components: Threat, Luck, Investment, Activity and Analysis.
The semantic cluster “hazard” (danger, accident, loss, etc.) was the component most prominently associated with risk, closely followed by “luck” (gain, play, adventure). “Until now, studies have mostly focused on the negative components of risk and ignored the fact that it may also have positive associations,” comments Wolf.
This method is designed to map both individual and group-specific differences in risk perception. Psychologists examined differences between men and women, and between different age groups. Overall, women and men and people of varying ages appeared to share similar views about risk. Nevertheless, there were some differences: a higher proportion of older people than younger people and a higher proportion of women than men are more closely associated with risk and less with luck.
The researchers also raised the question: Do people in different language regions think about risk in the same way? To investigate this, they compared the semantic networks of exposure that emerged from the German survey group with those that resulted from two other languages – Dutch and English. There were some small differences in the frequency of associations. For example, the word risk in Dutch is more closely associated with danger and in English with luck and finance.
Overall, however, the results indicate that risk representations have some universal correlates that transcend language boundaries. “Our study lays new foundations for investigating the question of how people think about risk,” says Wolf. “This may play an important role in helping to provide a better understanding of how different social groups interpret risk in order to improve risk communication strategies to combat social polarization.”