Summary: Researchers surveyed more than 4,300 people to create the first large-scale inventory of modern, real-life risky choices, revealing which decisions people actually struggle with in everyday life. Contrary to common assumptions, the most frequent risks were not recreational or purely financial but job-related decisions such as quitting or starting a new role. Health, financial, and social decisions followed.
Even across major societal disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic, the overall landscape of risk remained remarkably stable. These findings offer a more accurate foundation for studying contemporary decision-making and illustrate how age and gender shape the kinds of risks people encounter.
Key Facts
- Occupational risks dominate: Job-related choices were the most commonly reported real-world risky decisions across demographic groups.
- Risk landscape is stable: The distribution of risky choices stayed consistent even during major events such as the pandemic.
- Age patterns matter: Younger adults more often report risky choices like quitting a job, while older adults more commonly weigh accepting a new position.
Source: APS
Quitting a job. Buying a house. Accepting a risky medical treatment. Everyone eventually faces decisions that can reshape life paths.
As globalization and technology make options more numerous and complex, researchers face the challenge of accurately capturing which choices people actually find risky in modern life.
To address this, a 2025 study published in Psychological Science moved beyond laboratory scenarios and asked ordinary people to report the risky choices they encounter in daily life. The goal was to build an empirically grounded inventory to guide behavioral and decision-making research.
“Our basic goal was really to try to tap people’s actual experiences from real life,” said Renato Frey, a coauthor and professor of psychology at the University of Zurich.
Historically, much risk research has followed a top-down approach: scientists design hypothetical scenarios based on long-standing theories. Frey cautions that such approaches risk studying phenomena that no longer reflect everyday reality.
To create a contemporary catalogue of risky choices, Frey and colleagues recruited multiple samples in Switzerland to assemble a large, diverse population sample across genders and ages. In total, they surveyed more than 4,380 participants.
Participants were asked, in several differently worded prompts, to report a single risky choice. Some described a decision they themselves faced, others recalled choices made by people in their social circle. The prompts also varied by outcome: some asked for instances where the riskier option was chosen, others for times when the safer option prevailed.
Crucially, the researchers left the term “risky choice” undefined to capture two broad categories: decisions involving known probabilities (decisions under risk) and decisions with unknown or ambiguous outcomes (decisions under uncertainty). Examples include gambling versus founding a startup.
After collecting responses, the team analyzed and condensed them into a curated inventory of the 100 most common risky choices encountered by contemporary Swiss citizens. Each entry in the inventory records how common a choice is and which life domain it belongs to—occupational, financial, health, social, traffic-related, recreational, and so on.
Because data collection spanned the period before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers could test whether the kinds of risks people reported shifted with such a major event. They found that, overall, the distribution of risky choices across life domains remained fairly constant—suggesting a stable “ecology” or landscape of risk.
Across repeated assessments, occupational risks such as starting a new job or quitting an existing one were consistently the most frequently mentioned. Health-related, financial, social, traffic-related, and recreational risks followed in that order. Frey noted that many prior studies emphasize health or recreational risk; the current data suggest occupational risks deserve at least equal attention.
The research also revealed important demographic patterns. Younger adults often cited quitting a job as a common risky choice, while older adults more frequently reported deliberation about accepting a new job. Gender-related differences appeared as well, indicating that particular subgroups are exposed to particular types of risk.
These nuanced patterns can inform policy: identifying which groups face high-impact decisions can help target decision aids, counseling, or policy interventions more effectively.
Beyond policy, the inventory provides researchers with an empirically grounded toolkit. It can be used to develop, validate, and calibrate new measurement instruments that better reflect the risks people actually encounter.
Finally, the study highlights the value of discovery-oriented, bottom-up research alongside traditional laboratory work. “We really need both parts in psychological science,” Frey said, arguing that periodic, data-driven mappings of lived experience help ensure research stays relevant.
Key Questions Answered:
A: Occupational decisions—such as quitting or starting a job—were the most frequently reported risks across age groups.
A: The distribution of real-life risky choices remained stable before and during the pandemic, suggesting a consistent risk landscape in modern life.
A: By mapping real-world risky decisions, the findings help researchers design more relevant measurement tools and enable policymakers to support groups facing specific high-impact risks.
About this risk-taking and decision-making research news
Author: Hannah Brown
Source: APS
Contact: Hannah Brown – APS
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access. “Mapping the Ecology of Risk: 100 Risky Choices of Modern Life” by Renato Frey et al., Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/09567976251384975
Abstract
Mapping the Ecology of Risk: 100 Risky Choices of Modern Life
What risky choices do people face in a fast-changing world? This article reports on population surveys in Switzerland (N = 4,380) that collected risky choices relevant to everyday life. From these responses, the authors developed an inventory of 100 unique real-life choices to address questions about the structure, life domains, and stability of the current risk ecology.
A follow-up study (N = 933) indicated some generalizability of the construct of risk preference to these identified real-life choices. The five key insights from the analyses can guide researchers studying decision-making under risk and uncertainty (for example, when developing new measurement instruments) and inform policymakers concerned with how quickly modern risks change.