Emotional Responses to Luck, Risk and Uncertainty

Abstract

This chapter discusses the notions of feeling, assessment, and experience. The question arises what the relation and relevance of these notions is in the context of luck, risk, and uncertainty. The chapter explores this by examining the role of emotions for our assessment and experience of risk, uncertainty, and luck, respectively. Risks can relate to a variety of issues, for example, technological risks, health risks, or risks related to important life goals; such as the risk of a plane crash, of a nuclear meltdown, of contracting a deadly disease, or of being rejected for a research grant application. The chapter reviews the literature on risk and emotion as well as the more limited literature on emotions and uncertainty. Numerous emotion scholars from philosophy and psychology have developed so-called “cognitive theories of emotions”. Acknowledging the importance of ethics and emotions in evaluating risks does not mean that scientific, descriptive, and technical information can be neglected.