Societal risk perception among children, adolescents, adults, and elderly people

This study reported on mean risk magnitude judgments expressed by French pa rticipants aged 8 to 75 years, on a set of 91 hazardous activities, substan ces, and technologies. It then systematically analyzed the effects of the a ge factor on the judgments. Between elderly people and young and mature adu lts, few notable differences were detected. The most important result was t hat a considerable proportion of the children were able to estimate the ris k associated with most items of the present study, and that the linear asso ciation between children's ratings and adults' ratings was very high. This finding supports the view that the learning of the risk associated with var ious technologies, common in society, is a fast process, depending probably much more on exposure to media information and family discussions (sociali zation) than on exposure to everyday reality.