ENT.2 Perception of Risk

Cognitive Psychology, Perception, Risk

Perception fundamentally is the recognition, organization, and interpretation of information from our sensory experiences. It is well-known that perception impacts how we see the world around us and is often predicated on fundamental beliefs that we hold regarding reality itself. This can be demonstrated simply through the thought exercises of how we view light and, consequently, shadows. Our fundamental belief and understanding of how light and shadows work can drastically change the way that we perceive the same moving object. This is a fundamental representation of a top-down method of perception where our perception of an object is predicated on our preexisting beliefs or understanding and not merely on the integration of sensory information alone. The tie that I would like to make here is to introduce the perception of risk, defined by Le Minh Kieu & G. Senanayake (2023) as “a cognitive process of how humans sense and avoid harmful environmental conditions, emphasizing the role of intuitive risk judgments in evaluating potential threats,”, as inherently based on a top-down mode of perception. 

Top-down perception is rooted in past experiences and presuppositions that influence beliefs and fundamentally affect our perception of the world around us. Perception of risk has similarly been studied and shown to be heavily impacted by factors of experience and has been shown to have near-linear correlations globally (Le Minh Kieu & G. Senanayake, 2023). This global study found that there is a “clear positive correlation between the risk perception index and experience index” (Le Minh Kieu & G. Senanayake, 2023) An additional study on risk perception found that during the COVID-19 pandemic “In general, people who had personal experience of coronavirus perceived higher risk than those with no direct experience” (Savadori & Lauriola, 2022). Yet another study found that during this time, both exposure to someone close (proximity) who was impacted by COVID-19 and mere exposure to information regarding the disease through the media were both factors associated with increased perceived risk (Tagini et al., 2021).

The association between risk perception and experience is not that simple, though, returning to the global study mentioned above, risk perception may be associated with levels of perceived risk resilience. Risk resilience, according to Le Minh Kieu & G. Senanayake (2023), refers to “The ability of individuals to respond effectively, recover, and learn from unexpected dangers and disturbances”. Or in other words, the ability of an individual to bounce back from unexpected disturbances. This is additionally fascinating when addressing the correlation between risk perception and risk resilience globally and how factors such as public, social, political, or socioeconomic status play into perceived resilience. The degree to which a person believes they can respond to a risk (resilience) is directly associated with that person’s perception of risk (Bodas et al., 2022). This is a meta form of top-down perception where the perception of one factor (resilience) becomes the basis on which a second perceived factor (risk) is predicated.

In summary, it is interesting to understand that the way that we perceive risk is deeply rooted both in what we observe around us, previous experiences we have with risk, and how well we believe we can rebound if that event were to occur. Therefore, from a practical psychological standpoint, an individual who has experienced harm, or been exposed to it within close proximity, and has a low perception of risk resilience will have a greater perception of risk. In other words, an individual who experienced much harm (personally or through proximity, even exposure through media) and views themselves as incapable of sufficiently rebounding from that harm if it were to happen will have the greatest perception of risk. This is fueled by the direct correlation between low efficacy and susceptibility to harm (Tagini et al., 2021), which increases the likelihood of experiencing harm, only increasing risk perception. This loop is a demonstration of a loop that fuels top-down perception and is drawn out in Figure 1 below. In conclusion, your perception of experiences is directly correlated to your perceived resilience and self-efficacy, which influences susceptibility and future objective experiences. Subjective perception, therefore, directly impacts objective reality within the realm of risk and risk perception. 

References

Bodas, M., Peleg, K., Stolero, N., & Adini, B. (2022). Risk Perception of Natural and Human-Made Disasters—Cross Sectional Study in Eight Countries in Europe and Beyond. Frontiers in Public Health, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.825985

Le Minh Kieu, & G. Senanayake. (2023). Perception, experience and resilience to risks: a global analysis. Scientific Reports, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-46680-1

Savadori, L., & Lauriola, M. (2022). Risk perceptions and COVID-19 protective behaviors: A two-wave longitudinal study of epidemic and post-epidemic periods. Social Science & Medicine, 114949. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114949

Tagini, S., Brugnera, A., Ferrucci, R., Mazzocco, K., Compare, A., Silani, V., Pravettoni, G., & Poletti, B. (2021). It won’t happen to me! Psychosocial factors influencing risk perception for respiratory infectious diseases: A scoping review. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being. https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12274