The concept of risk is an outgrowth of our society's great concern about coping with the dangers of modern life. The Perception of Risk brings together the work of Paul Slovic, one of the world's leading analysts of risk, risk perception and risk management, to examine the gap between expert views of risk and public perceptions. Ordered chronologically, it allows the reader to see the evolution of our understanding of such perceptions, from early studies identifying public misconceptions of risk to recent work that recognizes the importance and legitimacy of equity, trust, power and other value-laden issues underlying public concern.

Decision Processes, Rationality and Adjustment to Natural Hazards * Cognitive Processes and Societal Risk Taking * Preference for Insuring Against Probable Small Losses: Insurance Implications * Accident Probabilities and Seat Belt Usage: A Psychological Perspective * How Safe Is Safe Enough? A Psychometric Study of Attitudes Toward Technological Risks and Benefits * Rating the Risks * Weighing the Risks: Which Risks are Acceptable? * Facts and Fears: Understanding Perceived Risk * Response Mode, Framing and Information-processing Effects in Risk Assessment * The Nature of Technological Hazard * Informing and Educating the Public about Risk * Perception of Risk from Automobile Safety Defects * Perception of Risk * The Social Amplification of Risk: A Conceptual Framework * The Perception and Management of Therapeutic Risk * Perception of Risk from Radiation * Perceived Risk, Trust and the Politics of Nuclear Waste * Intuitive Toxicology: Expert and Lay Judgments of Chemical Risks * Perceived Risk, Trust and Democracy * Adolescent Health-threatening and Health-enhancing Behaviors: A Study of Word Association and Imagery * Technological Stigma * Probability, Danger and Coercion: A Study of Risk Perception and Decision-making in Mental Health Law * Do Adolescent Smokers Know the Risks? * Insensitivity to the Value of a Human Life: A Study of Psychophysical Numbing * Trust, Emotion, Sex, Politics and Science: Surveying the Risk-assessment Battlefield * The Affect Heuristic in Judgments of Risks and Benefits*