Social risk effects : the "experience of social risk" factor

Anticipating "social risk", or risk caused by humans, affects decision-making differently from anticipating natural risk. Drawing upon a large sample of the US population (n=3,982), we show that the phenomenon generalizes to risk experience. Experiencing adverse outcomes caused by another human reduces future risk-taking, but experiencing the same outcome caused by nature does not. While puzzling from a consequentialist perspective, the Experience of Social Risk Factor that we identify deepens our understanding of decision-making in settings in which outcomes are co-determined by different sources of uncertainty. Our findings imply that a unifying theory of social risk effects requires new explanations.