>"for some reason I’m seemingly out on the end of the axis as far as risk-tolerance is concerned"
I wonder whether most people would rate themselves above or below average in terms of risk tolerance. Is this something we tend to have a good picture of, or is it more like the Dunning-Kruger effect?
The problem is that your assessment of risks also depends on your valuation of the underlying issues.
For the sake of argument, suppose that someone considers a 15% chance of going broke and having to live with their parents to be a "moderate" financial risk. Somebody else considers a 30% chance of the same thing to be a "small" financial risk. It's possible that the latter person has a higher risk tolerance. But it's also possible that they just like their parents a lot and wouldn't mind living with them as much as the first person.
My instinctive answer would be that most people consider themselves to be cautious or perhaps even cowardly - because, by nature, you pay the most attention to the risks that bother you the most, and if your internal, subjective mental process is to always avoid those risks, you will feel like a cautious person, even if there are other objectively-measurable risks that you are not avoiding.
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>"for some reason I’m seemingly out on the end of the axis as far as risk-tolerance is concerned"
I wonder whether most people would rate themselves above or below average in terms of risk tolerance. Is this something we tend to have a good picture of, or is it more like the Dunning-Kruger effect?
The problem is that your assessment of risks also depends on your valuation of the underlying issues.
For the sake of argument, suppose that someone considers a 15% chance of going broke and having to live with their parents to be a "moderate" financial risk. Somebody else considers a 30% chance of the same thing to be a "small" financial risk. It's possible that the latter person has a higher risk tolerance. But it's also possible that they just like their parents a lot and wouldn't mind living with them as much as the first person.
My instinctive answer would be that most people consider themselves to be cautious or perhaps even cowardly - because, by nature, you pay the most attention to the risks that bother you the most, and if your internal, subjective mental process is to always avoid those risks, you will feel like a cautious person, even if there are other objectively-measurable risks that you are not avoiding.