ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews important developments in the psychological and philosophical study of acceptable risk. Psychological and sociological research shows that laypeople have a different understanding of risk than experts, involving intuitions, value judgments and context-sensitive features. Research into public risk perceptions started in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the rise of empirical decision theory. Since the 1970s, Paul Slovic and his colleagues have conducted numerous psychometric studies into the risk perceptions of laypeople. This research began with the assumption that insofar as risk perceptions deviate from rational decision theory, they are biases. Slovic's work can be seen as an attempt to provide the basis for including lay-people's judgments in decision procedures about risk. Ethical intuitionism offers a theoretical framework based on which the considerations of laypeople can be understood as justified, reasonable moral intuitions. This approach can provide a theoretical framework for Slovic's normative claims.
