The illusion of risk modern scientific "prospect theory"

Paramount influence on the perception and future behavior can be defined as the presentation format of risk. For example, activities that increase the annual chance of death from 1 in 10,000 to 1.3 in 10,000 would probably have seemed much more risky if it were described as giving a 30% increase in mortality risk.

According to modern scientific "prospect theory" (prospect theory), outcomes (results) that are only just possible, underestimated in comparison with outcomes that occur certainly (with a probability of 100%). As a result, any protective actions that reduce the probability of harm to, say, 0.01 to zero will be valued much higher than actions that reduce the probability from 0.02 to 0.01. Scientists say that mental representation of protective actions (or the mind's perception of risk) can be easily manipulated to change apparent confidence. For example, an insurance policy that covers fire but not flood could be presented either as full protection against the specific risk of fire or as a reduction in the redistribution of the total loss of property. Prospect theory predicts that the policy will seem more attractive from the point of view of the first perspective (called the "pseudovariety"), in which it offers unconditional protection against fire.

American psychologists conducted an experiment in the context of one particular type of protection is vaccination. Respondents were asked two forms in which describes the necessity of vaccination and its results. Form No. 1 (probabilistic protection) described a disease which was expected to cover 20% of the population, and it was asked whether people voluntarily get vaccinated the vaccine, which protects half of previewsize. According to the Form № 2 (psevdoberemennost), there were two mutually exclusive and equiprobable varieties of disease, each of which will probably cover 10% of the population, and vaccination will give complete protection from one variety of the disease and no protection against another. Study participants were recruited through an advertisement in the student newspaper of the University of Oregon. Half of them have the Form # 1 – Form # 2. After reading the descriptions, they rated the likelihood that they will be vaccinated in this situation, using a scale that ranged from 1 ("almost certainly will not be vaccinated") to 7 ("almost certainly will be vaccinated"). Although both forms showed that vaccination reduced the overall risk of a person from 20% to 10%, the psychologists expected that she will seem more attractive because who will receive Form 2 than those who will receive the Form № 1. And the results confirmed this prediction: 57% of those who received Form 2, showed that they will be vaccinated, compared to 40% of those who received a Form 1.