ABSTRACT
People make subjective judgements about risk – balancing various aspects such as likelihood and severity. Several theories have been proposed to explain why different people make different estimates of the potential harm of risks manifesting. For the most part, the ratio of acute to chronic deaths, in terms of network coverage, runs at about 7 to 1. If a threat is external and 'exotic', and if the person perceiving the risk feels they are not in control of a situation, the perception of risk is higher. The fact that most smoking-related deaths are attributable to chronic conditions, and that each death tends to be diffuse in time and space, lessens their impact. One important characteristic of a schema involves people who are presented with information that contradicts their own schema, especially if it reaches them amongst a stream of information that otherwise reinforces their schema.
