ABSTRACT
Risk in the modern world is confronted and dealt with in three fundamental ways. Risk as feelings refers to our fast, instinctive and intuitive reactions to danger. Risk as analysis brings logic, reason and scientific deliberation to bear on hazard management. When our ancient instincts and our modern scientific analyses clash, we become painfully aware of a third reality … risk as politics. Members of the Society for Risk Analysis are certainly familiar with the scientific approach to risk and Slovic (1999) has elaborated the political aspect. In the present chapter we shall examine what recent research in psychology and cognitive neuroscience tells us about the third dimension, risk as feelings, an important vestige of our evolutionary journey.
