Role of emotions in risk perception

Abstract

The ways that emotions affect the perception of risk are grounded in a conception of emotion as involving appraisals, feelings, and preparations for behavioral and cognitive action that are manifest on biological, individual, and social levels of analysis. Because these components are evoked and modulated in accordance with goal-relevant properties of the environment, emotions typically adjust responses, including the perception of risk, in ways that are functional. This chapter explicates this approach to emotions and describes how it is employed in the two major theories of how emotions influence risk perception. One, the appraisal-tendency framework, accounts for how emotional appraisals and action tendencies modify the perception of risk. The other, feelings-as-information theory, accounts for how emotional feelings may serve as a heuristic for a person’s overall assessment of situational risks and benefits.