Ignorance Is Bliss? Network Analysis Shaping Our Understanding of Individual Security Risk Perceptions

This chapter investigates how risk perceptions are structured in the human mind. The examination of perceived security risks was based on data from the Finnish Emergency Services Attitudes survey. The data consisted of individual assessments on 14 different types of risk events, ranging from common risks such as traffic accidents to much rarer episodes such as outbreaks of war. The analysis puts forward a cognitive network model of the components of risk perception. The connections between components of risk perception allow to pinpoint the cohesion-building elements of subjective risk perception and the main gateways between different areas of risk perception. According to the results, the risk perception network shows resistance to change by being independent upon any single risk element, but the perceived prospect of severe environmental catastrophe and likelihood of pandemics have a larger potential to induce change in the network. Analytic thinking based on actual risk experience seems to produce more fragmented and locally coherent assessments of risks than intuitive thought originating from non-experience. For practitioners, the results offer possibilities to better prepare for the occurrence of risk events in the future.