Beyond the 'affect heuristic': the emotion-risk assemblage

Abstract

Little sociological research, with the notable exception of that on edgework, has focused directly on the emotional dimensions of risk rationalities. This space has largely been occupied by cognitive psychological approaches, particularly the ‘affect heuristic’ model. In this model, emotion is singled out as separate from and often in opposition to cognition. Emotional responses to risk are positioned as irrational and potentially misleading because they are viewed as emerging from the body and not from the mind. In this paper I argue that the theorising of the emotional dimensions of risk must recognise their fluid, dynamic and often contradictory and ambivalent nature. I take a relativist approach to both risk and emotion, and contend that emotion configures risk and risk configures emotion, and that aspects such as embodiment and location in space and place are important in these configurations. I propose the concept of the ‘emotion-risk assemblage’ as a way of acknowledging the contingent, constantly changing and inextricable aspects of the emotion and risk relationship. This concept avoids the attempt to position emotion as either rational or irrational, contending instead that it may better be viewed as one form of thinking.