Risk Psychology:
Understanding Risk Personality Types and their implications for project decisions

Conventional project risk management has focused primarily on the nature of the risk itself and the methods to quantify and manage risks. The critical importance of the human nature of risk has been vastly overlooked. Understanding individual differences in people’s perception and response to risk provides project managers with valuable insight into how and why decisions are made.

In this interview, Geoff Trickey offers a framework for understanding Risk Personality Types that is based on well-established psychological research into personality, attitudes and risk tolerance. The framework places individuals into one of eight easy to understand personality types, ranging in levels of risk tolerance and each associated with different personality characteristics. These characteristics have a fundamental influence on the way an individual is likely to perceive and handle risk.

First published on http://www.guerrillaprojectmanagement.com (2013)