PSY 409a October 9, 2006

Risk Homeostasis: The Balance of Individual’s Risks and Benefits

By Kelley Graves

Instructions for this activity are found at:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/leonj/leonpsy25/g25-oral1.htm

Instructor: Dr. Leon James

Leon James (2006). Lecture Notes on Driving Psychology for G25. Article 13. Online at:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy25/409a-g25-lecture-notes.htm

Related Links:

http://psyc.queensu.ca/target/

This link will connect you to the entire works on target risk by Gerald J.S. Wilde, Ph.D. There is an email address for the author provided for further questions or comments. It provides some general definitions that are useful for comprehension as well a concept by concept hot-link outline.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=3602497&dopt=Citation

This is a link within the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. They provide another definition for Risk homeostasis theory and traffic accident data. There are 62 other links providing definitions of all other kinds of homeostasis.

The Theory of Risk Homeostasis

Is a homeostatic engineering device that is modeled after processes that naturally occur in living organisms, here, specifically how it applies to traffic accidents.

It does not refer to a single individual, but to all road users within a given area.

Homeostasis is not a process, it is an outcome.

Target Risk Level

Is the ‘preferred or desired’ level of risk which has optimal benefit.

Determined by four categories of motivating factors:

Expected advantages of risky behavior

Expected costs of risky behavior

Expected benefits of safe behavior

Expected costs of safe behavior

A person’s target level of traffic accident risk is defined as that level of subjective risk at which the difference between benefits and costs is believed to maximize.

Expected gain – expected loss = expected net benefit

There are variations in the target risk level between individuals

Long Term

- Cultural Values

- Socio-economic status

- Occupation

- Level of Education

- Age/ gender

Short Term

- Purpose of Trip

- Pre-occupations

- Mood

- Fatigue

Momentary

Perceived Level of Risk

Subjective accident risk is a global notion representing the degree of danger felt by the individual, not a calculated explanation.

Level of perceived risk comes in 3 forms

Person’s past experience with traffic

Person’s assessment of the accident potential in the immediate situation

Degree of confidence the person possesses

Perceived level of risk will be relatively low if the person is confident about having the necessary coping skills

Perceived level of risk will be relatively higher when persons doubt their abilities

Skills that influence behavior

There are 3 types of skills that have an effect on the level of risk perceived and the action performed.

Perceptual skills

Decision-making skills

Vehicle-handling skills

The level of performance in a task can be improved by two methods

Fitting the operator to the task

Fitting the task to the operator

The purpose of maintaining a target level of risk is to get the most benefit.

Individual Differences in Skill

People differ in willingness and ability

Risk-under estimators

- Take more risk than they should with their target level

Risk-over estimators

- Take less risk than they should if they were better informed

Over confidence is more frequent than under confidence

A person’s basic nature does not change as a function of the situation, but the amount of risk accepted may be different from one situation to another.

My homepage:

http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409af2006/graves/graves-home.htm

Class homepage:

http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy25/classhome-g25.htm