2014/10/01 by Sabine Roeser
Arts and Humanities · Decision Sciences · Social Sciences · #Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics #Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics #Risk Perception and Management
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/meta.12110
openalex publication_date 2014/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Abstract People can be risk seeking and risk averse, but people can also be uncertainty averse: in other words, if risk is at least the possibility of an unwanted affect, then it is not only the unwanted effect that they want to avoid, it can also be the uncertainty inherent in the possibility that they wish to avoid. This uncertainty aversion can even lead to a state where someone prefers a certain outcome at all costs, even when it is the worst case. This gives rise to the following paradox: the worst case seems to be more acceptable than the state where there is still a chance that it will not materialize. We can call this the U nbearable U ncertainty P aradox. This essay provides a first conceptual sketch of this phenomenon that seems to be widespread but nevertheless does not appear to have been identified before, either by philosophers or by psychologists.