Risley Effect
Updated 2026-08-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Also described as risk compensation, the effect holds that when people feel protected, by protective equipment or driver-assistance systems for instance, they adjust their behavior toward greater risk, so the expected safety gain is partly or wholly cancelled. The result is that physical safety improvements alone do not reliably reduce accident rates. Genuine safety therefore has to anticipate and intervene in how people adapt their behavior, not only add protection.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Predict adaptation: assume users will spend part of any new safety margin on speed or risk. - Design behavior too: pair protection with feedback that keeps perceived risk realistic. - Measure net effect: compare accident rates after the change instead of assuming improvement.
Anchor fast decisions
Protection lowers the perceived cost of risky behavior, so the chosen level of caution falls and the behavior rises until perceived risk returns to its earlier level. The safety gain is therefore converted into additional risk-taking rather than into fewer accidents. The name is also used in the literature for conditioned immune effects, where a neutral cue paired with an immune-modulating drug later triggers immune changes on its own, so the specific referent of the label remains uncertain.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_gapverified
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