ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how decisions concerning risks are elaborated at the individual and group levels, by reviewing findings from cognitive psychology and neurobiology. It provides the analyses and results to show that both the individual and public perceptions of risk and the likelihood of risk occurrence are influenced by emotions, experiences and connotations, in addition to mere probability calculations. Furthermore, findings from biology, in particular neurobiology, suggest that children make risky decisions in a different way to adults. The chapter addresses the issue of children versus adults, and examines whether children make risky decisions the same way as adults do. Assessing effective risk-management strategies, central to discourse of online risk, is dependent on understanding how individuals decide to or not to engage in risky behaviour. In order to evaluate the legitimacy of societal regulatory strategies, such as restrictions and legislation, there must be a link between the descriptive level, the prescriptive level and the normative level.
