Why Do People Make Risky Decisions?
There are several reasons why people might engage in risky sports and activities.
Updated September 21, 2025 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
Recently I was invited to participate in a podcast on risky decisions. The specific incident was the death of a hiker who had deliberately chosen a route that was known to be really dangerous. Why would any rational person choose to expose himself or herself to this degree of risk? That's what my interviewer asked me. But beyond the question was the interviewer’s mindset — you have to be crazy to voluntarily put yourself in a position where you are risking your life.
I disagreed. I immediately thought about the movie “Free Solo,” documenting Alex Honnold’s climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, in California in June 2017. Hannold does not strike me as someone who is crazy. He did not wake up one day and say to himself, “Let me try to summit El Capitan without any ropes or safety harness.” He carefully plotted his route and tried it out using safety harness, rejecting options that he judged to be too dangerous. He only did his free solo when he felt sufficiently confident.
I can think of several reasons why people might expose themselves to unnecessary risk.
One is that they may be wired differently than the rest of us. I have seen some evidence that Honnold doesn't show the same amygdala-based fear response as the rest of us.
A second reason is that some people are more prone to sensation-seeking than others. They really enjoy that adrenaline rush. They will go skydiving or whitewater kayaking.
Third, people often enjoy challenging themselves. They try tougher and tougher tasks, and they get a wonderful feeling of satisfaction when they succeed. You can go rafting down a lazy river in the summer and that's pleasant. But it is more interesting if there are some rapids and much more exciting as the rapids increase in difficulty and when you finish white-water rafting down a Class V set of rapids you feel really exhilarated. So the greater the challenge the greater the satisfaction.
The fourth reason is that people claim to be more alive when facing these challenges. Your focus is narrow and intense. Your mind is not wandering.
Yet another reason is that you can get a lot of respect from others who see that you have faced the difficult challenge and prevailed.
And I imagine there are additional reasons beyond the ones that I have mentioned.
Therefore, I do not think that you have to be crazy to expose yourself to danger. If no one ever sprained an ankle, there wouldn't be much challenge. I don't think it's reasonable to take a low-probability event like the death of a hiker and blow it out of proportion.
More importantly, when someone asks a question like, “Why would anyone expose themselves to a dangerous risk?” we should avoid the tendency to come up with a single cause. Life is too complex could be summed up in simple single causes. For any individual, several or even all of the causes I've listed above could be operating. We have to be on our guard against questions that encourage us to fall into oversimplifications.
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Gary Klein, Ph.D., is a senior scientist at MacroCognition LLC. His most recent book is Seeing What Others Don't: The remarkable ways we gain insights.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.