The human dimension of risk is an important and under-explored aspect of risk management issues. How we perceive risk, and understanding patterns of behaviour and seeing how these relate to the processes of decision-making and policy development needs greater exploration. The School’s Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies 2nd Annual Meeting – ‘The Human Dimension of Risk: Perception, Behaviour and Decision-Making in Risk Management’ – took on that gigantic challenge.
Dr Leslie Knapp, Reader at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Anthropology, explains how observing group behaviour in primates, in particular how they herd and respond to ‘threats’, can teach us a lot about ourselves.