AUTHOR=Heino Matti T. J. , Proverbio Daniele , Saurio Kaisa , Siegenfeld Alexander , Hankonen Nelli TITLE=From a false sense of safety to resilience under uncertainty JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=15 YEAR=2024 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1346542 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1346542 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=

Understanding and acting upon risk is notably challenging, and navigating complexity with understandings developed for stable environments may inadvertently build a false sense of safety. Neglecting the potential for non-linear change or “black swan” events – highly impactful but uncommon occurrences – may lead to naive optimisation under assumed stability, exposing systems to extreme risks. For instance, loss aversion is seen as a cognitive bias in stable environments, but it can be an evolutionarily advantageous heuristic when complete destruction is possible. This paper advocates for better accounting of non-linear change in decision-making by leveraging insights from complex systems and psychological sciences, which help to identify blindspots in conventional decision-making and to develop risk mitigation plans that are interpreted contextually. In particular, we propose a framework using attractor landscapes to visualize and interpret complex system dynamics. In this context, attractors are states toward which systems naturally evolve, while tipping points – critical thresholds between attractors – can lead to profound, unexpected changes impacting a system’s resilience and well-being. We present four generic attractor landscape types that provide a novel lens for viewing risks and opportunities, and serve as decision-making contexts. The main practical contribution is clarifying when to emphasize particular strategies – optimisation, risk mitigation, exploration, or stabilization – within this framework. Context-appropriate decision making should enhance system resilience and mitigate extreme risks.