Why do people take risks? The examples of smoking and bad driving

1. Why do people take risks? The examples of smoking and bad driving Robert West University College London London January 2008

2. Outline • Defining ‘risk’ and ‘risk taking’ • Sources of risk taking • Understanding motivation • Smoking • Bad driving • Some potential insights

3. What is risk taking? • Risk ... • the potential for harm • Risk taking ... • is behaving in a way that a reasonable person in possession of relevant information would be able to judge as having a significant likelihood of causing serious unwanted harm • can only be judged from a particular perspective and taking intent into account • deliberately shooting oneself in the head with suicidal intent • playing Russian Roulette

4. Sources of risk taking Impulse-driven behaviour • Risk unawareness: The individual reacts to stimuli without considering the potential consequences Motive-driven behaviour • Risk ignorance: The individual does not know about or understand the potential for harm and would behave differently if s/he did • Risk acceptance: The individual knows about and understands the potential for harm but thinks the potential benefits are worth it at the time • Risk seeking: The individual knows about and understands the potential for harm and is motivated in part by the experience of danger

5. Understanding motivation (PRIME Theory) • Our actions at every moment are generated by the balance between competing impulses and inhibitions present at the time • These come: • directly from stimuli interacting with learned habit mechanisms and instincts • indirectly from stimuli interacting with various learning mechanisms to generate wants and needs • Wants are driven by anticipated pleasure or satisfaction • Needs are driven by anticipated relief from anxiety, distress or a drive state (e.g. hunger) • Beliefs can only influence our behaviours by generating wants and/or needs • Our identities are a very important source of wants and needs • We are motivated to form plans in anticipation of future events but these need to be remembered and generate wants or needs at the time to influence our actions

6. What this means for risk taking • At moments when the opportunity to engage in a risky behaviour arises, wants, needs and impulses to engage in the behaviour compete with the need to refrain from the behaviour because of anxiety about potential adverse consequences • Understanding and predicting what happens depends on finding out about the strength of these wants, needs and impulses at the time

7. Personal characteristics of risk takers • Weaker propensity to control impulses • Weaker propensity to experience fear when imagining negative outcomes • Stronger wants and needs met by the activity in question • Weaker wants and needs that conflict with the activity

8. Smoking • There is insufficient anxiety caused by imagining the negative consequences of smoking to overcome the anticipated satisfaction, enjoyment or relief generating the desire, need or impulse to smoke

9. Smoking statistics • 25% of adults in the UK smoke cigarettes • 90,000 people die prematurely each year because of smoking • Most smokers begin in the mid-teens • Most smokers wish they had never started and want to stop

10. Who becomes a regular smoker? • Higher levels of depression • Lower impulse control • More smokers in immediate family and friends • More sensitive to rewarding effects of nicotine • Lower propensity to learn from punishment

11. What motivates attempts to stop smoking? • In the UK 50% of smokers try to stop in a given year • The main sources of motivation to try to stop in the UK are: • worry about health • cost • social disapproval • The main sources of motivation not to try to stop are: • enjoyment • perceived need for smoking to cope with stress • social approval • fear of failure

12. What causes relapse to smoking? • Less than 5% of unaided serious quit attempts succeed • The impulse to smoke in situations where cigarettes are available overwhelms the need to remain abstinent at that moment • Prior worry about health beliefs and enjoyment of smoking play little role • Nicotine-driven impulses and needs play the major role

13. Bad driving • There is insufficient anxiety caused by imagining crashing or punishment to overcome the wants, needs and impulses that promote bad driving

14. Bad driving statistics • Traffic accidents kill 3000 people each year, seriously injure 29,000 and cause minor injuries to 240,000 people • Approximately 600 people are killed each year because of drink driving, 2000 are seriously injured and 14,000 receive minor injuries

15. Who are the bad drivers? • Young • Male • High in social deviance

16. What makes bad drivers become better drivers? • Increased fear of serious adverse consequences • Changes in social norms about driving • Reduced desire for excitement • Reduced desire to ‘show off’

17. Seven simple ideas embodied within PRIME theory • Wants, needs and urges vary with context and therefore so does behaviour • Actions at every moment arise from the balance between competing wants, need and urges present at that moment • Wants and needs coming from diverse sources summate if they are present at the same time • Identity is a potentially very powerful source of wants and needs that can impart cross situational consistency in behaviour • Identity is largely driven by social influence • Identity change is one of the major drivers underpinning changes to behaviour patterns • Behaviour patterns can change abruptly as well as gradually

18. Some potential insights • All our motivations are ‘in the moment’ and ultimately involve competing impulses and inhibitions • Beliefs about potential harms of risk behaviours are often not present or wants and needs they generate are too weak in the moment to overpower momentary wants, needs and impulses to engage in the behaviour • Reducing risk taking involves: • using conditioning to generate powerful inhibitions that are triggered by the situations in which the risk taking behaviour occurs • fostering a strong and coherent identity as someone who values carefulness as it relates to the activity in question