The question, "how do people perceive risks?"," can be answered if we look closely into some of the decision-making heuristics and biases involved in risk perception. Heuristics and biases play a significant role one's perception and assessment of risks. Risks are often perceived with the same heuristics used to make decisions and can often misguide people in terms of judging the risk criteria of a given situation. However, heuristics and biases can also aid in risk assessment under particular circumstances. According to Paul Slovic article that was published in 1987 regarding risk perception, people's' evaluations of risks are largely influenced by cultural and social factors that contribute towards certain biases. Slavic's experiment required people to focus on assessing risks associated with certain activities and technologies. An article that summarizes Slavic's study, "How Do We Perceive Risks: Slovic Landmark Analysis," states:.
"Slovic masterfully summarizes the key qualitative characteristics that result in judgments that a certain activity is risky or not. People tend to be intolerant of risks that they perceive as being uncontrollable, having catastrophic potential, having fatal consequences, or bearing an inequitable distribution of risks and benefits.".
Slovic's study depicts the relationship between the representativeness heuristic and risk assessment with the results of his experiment. He found that that people assess technologies such as nuclear weapons to be more harmful than driving cars, when more deaths have resulted from the latter. Representativeness is a heuristic that involves categorizing people or events based prototypes that exist in our minds. Slovic supports his conclusion with the observation that; most people considered nuclear weapons to be more harmful could be due to the fact that the media covers more deaths associated with nuclear weapons than it does with car accidents.
