Human Risk - PSY00096M

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  • Department: Psychology
  • Credit value: 20 credits
  • Credit level: M
  • Academic year of delivery: 2025-26

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Semester 1 2025-26

Module aims

As more powerful technologies become more accessible to more people, the future of the species depends almost entirely on human decision making and behaviour. This basic insight puts psychology—the science of thinking and behaviour—at the fulcrum of extinction versus flourishing. Navigating risk involves more than mere number crunching. Decades of research in cognitive science has shown that understanding risk involves grappling with individual differences, context, and societal factors. In this module, we will examine these and other factors, achieving an up-to-date overview on the psychology of risk, and asking how a scientific approach to forecasting, luck, and error can help humanity survive the current century.

Module learning outcomes

  • Discuss the development of rational approaches to risk and their relation to psychological theory
  • Critically evaluate how everyday risk perception deviates from rational risk assessment in systematic and predictable ways
  • Integrate the role of risk at different levels of analysis—brain, person, group, society—and over different timescales
  • Reason about the impact of decisions taken now on the future of humanity.

Module content

  • Origins of risk research
  • Hazards and risk perception
  • Development and individual differences
  • Luck and games
  • Frontiers of forecasting
  • Disaster and risk mitigation
  • Extinction risks

Indicative assessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Special assessment rules

None

Indicative reassessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Module feedback

The marks on all assessed work will be provided on e-vision.

Indicative reading

None specified.