ANN ARBOR, Mich.— A camper who chases a grizzly but won’t risk unprotected sex. A sky diver afraid to stand up to the boss. New research shows that not all risk is created equal and people show a mixture of both risky and non-risky behaviors. The survey also shows that men are significantly riskier than women overall. The University of Michigan research refutes the standard theories of risk that group people as either risk-seeking or risk-avoiding, and suggests that we can have a mix of both risky and non-risky behavior depending on the type. The study appears in the journal Evolutionary Psychology. Daniel Kruger, a research scientist at the U-M School of Public Health, and colleagues X.T. Wang, University of South Dakota, and Andreas Wilke, UCLA, identified areas of risk taking (risk domains) based on the types of challenges that our ancestors faced during many thousands of years of human evolution. ‘People are complex,’ said Kruger. ‘Just because somebody seems to be a big risk taker in one area doesn’t mean they will take risks in all areas.’ The types of risks identified include competition with other individuals; competition with other groups; mating and allocating […]