Risky choices: What are today’s biggest life decisions?

Life comes with tough choices. Some slip by with barely a thought, while others arrive with the force of a freight train.

Choosing a college, walking away from a job, making a major purchase – these moments steer our lives in new directions, stirring up hope, stress, and everything in between.

Risk is part of being human, yet our world keeps shifting fast. Technology speeds things up. Global connections add layers. Choices stack up, and many feel more tangled than they used to.

People still have to make decisions, though. That part has not changed. What has changed is how researchers study these choices.

A closer look at modern risk

In a study published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers set out to try something different.

“Our basic goal was really to try to tap people’s actual experiences from real life,” said Renato Frey, a co-author of the study and professor of psychology at the University of Zurich.

Professor Frey explained that earlier research often worked in a “top-down manner.” Scientists made up scenarios they thought were risky. But many were built on ideas from decades ago.

“Pun intended, there’s the risk that we study outdated phenomena,” said Professor Frey.

How people talk about their risky choices

The team behind the study recruited more than 4,380 participants in Switzerland. They wanted a group that cut across genders and ages.

The experts asked each person to share one risky choice. The question changed slightly for different people so the team could gather a wider range.

Some shared a moment from their own lives. Some told a story from someone close to them. Some described a time when the riskier option won, while others explained when the safer path felt right.

The study did not define what counted as risky. The team wanted freedom in the answers. Some choices involved random chance, like playing roulette. Those are sometimes called decisions under risk.

Other choices had unknown outcomes, like starting a company. Those fall into what some researchers call decisions under uncertainty.

Stable pattern of risky choices

Once the choices were collected, the team sorted them. They looked for patterns and grouped similar stories.

The researchers ended up with a list of 100 risky choices that show up again and again in modern life in Switzerland. The list shows how often certain choices appear and which parts of life they touch, like work, health, money, or social connections.

The timing of the project also gave the researchers a chance to compare choices before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. They found that “by and large, the distributions of these risky choices to different life domains stay fairly constant.”

In other words, even when the world shifts, the types of risks people face do not swing wildly. The authors describe this overall pattern of risk as “surprisingly stable.”

Most risky choices are work-related

Work-related choices popped up the most. People often mentioned starting a job, quitting a job, or making a major career shift. After that came health, financial, social, traffic-related, and recreational decisions such as traveling alone.

“That was quite an interesting finding,” Frey said. He pointed out that researchers sometimes focus more on health or recreational behavior.

“But according to our data, it seems to be a bit like vice versa. First and foremost, people think of occupational risky choices.”

The team also found clear patterns linked to age and gender. Younger adults often talked about quitting jobs. Older adults were more likely to worry about whether to accept a new job.

“These more nuanced patterns help us understand essentially which subgroups of the population are exposed to which risky choices,” noted Professor Frey. He said this could help policymakers determine who might need more support when facing major decisions.

Why this work matters

The list built by the researchers can guide future studies. It gives scientists a fresh starting point to design new tools for studying how people react to risk and uncertainty. It also reminds the field of something important.

Psychology is not only about running tests in controlled rooms. It is also about learning from what people live through each day.

“I think this [study] could serve as kind of a blueprint for how, at least every once in a while, we should probably reach out and do this more discovery-oriented, data-driven, bottom-up research,” Frey said. “We really need both parts in psychological science.”

This project shows that risk does not only show up in rare or dramatic moments. It shows up in the daily decisions people face.

When researchers listen to people’s stories, they gain a clearer view of the choices that shape real lives.

The full study was published in the journal Psychological Science.

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