Back in the summer I interviewed Dylan Evans for the UNLV Gaming Podcast. His main area of current research is risk intelligence. He’s set up a website where you can test your own risk intelligence. Here are the details:
Risk Intelligence Quotient RQ is a measure of a person’s ability to estimate probabilities accurately. People with high risk intelligence tend to make better predictions than those with low RQ.When a banker guesses how likely it is that a customer will repay a loan; when a doctor estimates the chance that a patient has a particular disease; and when you try to figure out whether or not to take your umbrella with you when you go out for a walk – all these tasks require risk intelligence.High risk intelligence is quite rare. Fifty years of research in the psychology of judgment and decision making shows that most people are not very good at thinking clearly about risky choices. If risk intelligence was more common, the world wouldn't be mired in financial crisis, since this was largely caused by unwise lending and borrowing – both of which involve risk intelligence. Too many lenders and borrowers overestimated the chances that loans would be repaid.We set up this website as part of a private research project aimed at measuring risk intelligence in the general population. Please help us by taking the short test we have designed.
I don’t totally understand how the test works, but give it a shot if you’re curious about how your judgment of risk is assessed.
