In psychology, economics and philosophy, preference is a technical term usually used in relation to choosing between alternatives. For example, someone prefers A over B if they would rather choose A than B. Preferences are central to decision theory because of this relation to behavior. Some methods such as Ordinal Priority Approach use preference relation for decision-making. As connative states, they are closely related to desires.
In economics and finance, risk aversion is the tendency of people to prefer outcomes with low uncertainty to those outcomes with high uncertainty, even if the average outcome of the latter is equal to or higher in monetary value than the more certain outcome. Risk aversion explains the inclination to agree to a situation with a more predictable, but possibly lower payoff, rather than another situation with a highly unpredictable, but possibly higher payoff.
In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environment), often focusing on negative, undesirable consequences. Many different definitions have been proposed. The international standard definition of risk for common understanding in different applications is "effect of uncertainty on objectives".
In economics and finance, risk neutral preferences are preferences that are neither risk averse nor risk seeking. A risk neutral party's decisions are not affected by the degree of uncertainty in a set of outcomes, so a risk neutral party is indifferent between choices with equal expected payoffs even if one choice is riskier. In the context of the theory of the firm, a risk neutral firm facing risk about the market price of its product, and caring only about profit, would maximize the expected value of its profit (with respect to its choices of labor input usage, output produced, etc.
Risk perception is the subjective judgement that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk. Risk perceptions often differ from statistical assessments of risk since are affected by a wide range of affective (emotions, feelings, moods, etc.), cognitive (gravity of events, media coverage, risk-mitigating measures, etc.), contextual (framing of risk information, availability of alternative information sources, etc.), and individual (personality traits, previous experience, age, etc.) factors.
