The dismissal of people and their behavior concerning risk as idiotic really doesn’t help much
In fact, the way such labelling language works is, it creates the delusion that the problem has somehow been explained. We end up not taking the social situation seriously about how people make sense of risk, which limits our ability to learn. We attribute error to human character and personality type and this reinforces our perception that we would not be so stupid. Further, the way we construct rational non-solutions to social psychological factors helps more deeply entrench our attributed assumption, and we are convinced all is well for us. The delusion is maintained and we feel comfortable that others are stupid and we are not.
Source: Risk makes sense: human judgment and risk, Dr Robert Long and Joshua Long, 2012
