Using data from seven microworld experiments (N = 841), we investigated howparticipants reacted to simulated disasters with different risk profiles in amicroworld. Our central focus was to investigate how the scale of a disasteraffected the choices and response times of these reactions. We find that one-offlarge-scale disasters prompted stronger reactions to move away from the affectedregion than recurrent small-scale adverse events, despite the overall risk of adisaster remaining constant across both types of events. A subset ofparticipants are persistent risk-takers who repeatedly put themselves inharm’s way, despite having all the experience and information required toavoid a disaster. Furthermore, while near-misses prompted a small degree ofprecautionary movement to reduce one’s subsequent risk exposure, directlyexperiencing the costs of the disaster substantially increased the desire tomove away from the affected region. Together, the results point to ways in whichlaboratory risk-taking tasks can be used to inform the kinds of communicationand interventions that seek to mitigate people’s exposure to risk.
