Forget Skydiving, the Likely Source of Risk Is Your Career
What surprised researchers in a 4,380 participant study on risk-taking.
Posted November 26, 2025 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
What counts as "risky" in the modern world?
For decades, behavioral scientists have studied risk by focusing on memorable, dramatic behaviors—gambling addictions, extreme sports, drunk driving, unprotected sex , and substance abuse .
But nobody had systematically asked ordinary people: What decisions feel risky to you in your actual life? Researchers at the University of Zurich decided to find out what that answer was. A just-published paper (November 2025) reveals findings that surprised them.
Responses from 4,380 people in Switzerland revealed a massive gap between expert assumptions and lived experience.
The researchers expected to hear about adventure-seeking. Instead, they heard overwhelmingly about work.
Jobs Are the Biggest Realm of Risk
The study results indicated that 32 percent of the risky choices people reported were work-related. Career was the largest risk category by far, outpacing every other domain of life.
The most frequently reported risky choices were:
Translation: Three of the top five risky choices were purely about work.
Work decisions outweighed health (18 percent), finance (17 percent), social life and relationships (13 percent), traffic (12 percent), and recreation (9 percent). For everyone under age 60, work decisions dominated their lives.
Work Dominates Across Your Entire Career
The pattern held remarkably consistent across decades of working life:
Translation: From the moment you start thinking about your future until you retire, your job is the primary source of perceived risk in your life.
Even a Global Pandemic Didn't Change This
The researchers collected data before COVID-19 (November 2019), during the pandemic (November 2020), and after (2023).
Notably, the work-related decisions stayed at the top. Even during a global health crisis, people's fundamental risk landscape remained: Should I accept this job? Should I quit? Should I start my own business?
The pandemic didn't reshape what felt risky. It confirmed the outsized role of work.
Research and Lived Reality
Academics have traditionally measured risk by asking about dramatic behaviors:
But in reality, people encountered work and social choices almost twice as often:
Translation: While research focused on whether you'd bungee jump, you were actually deciding: Should I stay in this soul-crushing job or risk the unknown?
The Swiss Context: Does It Matter?
This study was conducted in Switzerland—one of the world's safest, most stable countries with low crime , a strong economy, excellent healthcare, and political stability. In countries with high levels of violence, poverty, or institutional corruption, the risk landscape would likely look different.
But here's what the Swiss context can tell us: When you're not worried about physical survival, work is the primary arena of risk in your life.
High Stakes of Work: You're Not Overreacting
If your job feels like the most stressful , risky part of your life, even though you're not jumping out of airplanes or handling snakes, this study validates that you're not weak, wrong, ungrateful, or alone.
In generally safe and stable contexts, work is where our primary risks live. Work becomes high-stakes because, in modern life, it's tied to income, yes, but also to your identity , your community, your values, and your sense of self.
The weight is real, even if it doesn't show up in traditional measures of "risk." And you're not alone in feeling the weight.
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Ludmila N. Praslova, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, is a professor of Organizational Psychology at Vanguard University of Southern California.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.