Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
“
It hurts in my wallet
”
: Pain and costs are treated the same in the brain.
So far in this topic, we have been confronted with three reasons
why acting safely is not as obvious as we might think. In Chapter 2,
we discussed the fact that, from an evolutionary perspective, we
have developed a risk tolerance that is too high for present dangers.
In this chapter, we have seen two more elements of our noncon-
scious system that put a burden on safety behavior. The short-term
feedback we receive concerning safety behavior has a negative bal-
ance: more negative than positive feedback and hardly any visible
rewards. The ambivalence of the pain center toward safety invest-
ments is the third reason. It makes each person opportunistic to a
certain extent, although it will never reach the point at which it pro-
motes dangerous actions.
5.5 THE PERCEPTION OF REASONABLE COSTS
A bias of the nonconscious system has to do with the perception of
reasonable costs. The perception of cost or reward is always a compar-
ison between an actual level of needed investment and our internal
norms about how much we want to spend. This makes evaluation of
safety investments personal. If several people perceive the same out-
come of a specific behavior, it can either be perceived as positive, as
neutral, or as negative.
Needed level of
safety investment
for a certain task
Perceived
safety
investment
Perceived
safety
investment
Accepted
level of
safety
investment
Accepted
level of
safety
investment
Accepted
level of
safety
investment
A
B
C
The perceived investment is related
to the accepted investment
