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i. The psychometric paradigm suggests that high lack of control, high catastrophic potential, and severe consequences account for the increased risk perception and anxiety associated with dread risks.
ii. Because people estimate the frequency of a risk by recalling instances of its occurrence from their social circle or the media, they may overvalue relatively rare but dramatic risks because of their over presence and undervalue frequent, less dramatic risks.
iii. According to the preparedness hypothesis, people are prone to fear events that have been particularly threatening to survival in human evolutionary history. Given that in most of human evolutionary history people lived in relatively small groups, rarely exceeding 100 people, a dread risk, which kills many people at once, could potentially wipe out one’s whole group. Indeed research found that people’s fear peaks for risks killing around 100 people but does not increase if larger groups are killed.
iv. Fearing dread risks can be an ecologically rational strategy. Besides killing a large number of people at a single point in time, dread risks reduce the number of children and young adults who would have potentially produced offspring. Accordingly, people are more concerned about risks killing younger, and hence more fertile, groups.
Titany answered the question on December 7, 2021 at 07:19