CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS – The great psychologist William James was Gertrude Stein’s teacher and mentor. As legend tells it, James once posed a single question on a final examination: “What is risk?” Stein wrote, “This is,” walked out of the examination room, and went about her business. Supposedly he gave her an A.
After a tragedy such as the one last week in Boston, people have a heightened sense of risk. If a flood, an earthquake, a violent crime or a terrorist attack has occurred in the recent past, people tend to have a feeling of vulnerability, captured in the alarming idea that “you can’t be safe anywhere.” Often that feeling is far greater than reality warrants. This is so because of two facts about how human beings respond to risk.
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