{
  "title": "Rare risks: what experience alone cannot reveal",
  "url": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/risques-rares-ce-que-experience-ne-suffit-pas-a-reveler-en",
  "language": "en",
  "datePublished": "2026-06-14",
  "publisher": {
    "name": "SHR — Swiss Human Resources",
    "url": "https://www.shr.swiss",
    "address": "Esplanade de Pont-Rouge 9A, 1212 Lancy, Suisse"
  },
  "summary": "An incident-free record is experience, not a risk estimate. Research shows why this distinction matters when a decision affects service continuity.",
  "section": "Research",
  "topic": "Decision-making",
  "place": {
    "name": "Bern",
    "region": "Berne",
    "country": "CH"
  },
  "keyPoints": [
    {
      "heading": "What the literature establishes",
      "point": "Ralph Hertwig, Greg Barron, Elke U."
    },
    {
      "heading": "What lived experience leaves out",
      "point": "Ralph Hertwig and Ido Erev (2009, Trends in Cognitive Sciences) examine the mechanisms behind this description–experience gap, including limited sampling and the weight of recent observations."
    },
    {
      "heading": "The hasty conclusion",
      "point": "One might conclude that a written probability should always take precedence over operational experience."
    },
    {
      "heading": "The limits of the evidence and incident records",
      "point": "The experiments reviewed mainly concern simplified risky choices, rather than regulatory, public health or industrial decisions made in Berne."
    },
    {
      "heading": "A practical check in Berne",
      "point": "Within SHR's [decision-making](/formation/prise-de-decision/berne) programme, an exercise applicable in Berne is to review, over one month, every decision to maintain, strengthen or relax a safeguard: continuity of a federal administration service, a public health alert system, telecom redundancy or a precision-industry inspection."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "authors": "Erev",
      "year": "2004",
      "source": "Psychological Science"
    },
    {
      "authors": "Erev",
      "year": "2009",
      "source": "Trends in Cognitive Sciences"
    }
  ],
  "wordCount": 416,
  "image": "https://www.shr.swiss/img/blog-editorial-2026-06-14-en.jpg?v=4",
  "translations": {
    "fr": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/risques-rares-ce-que-experience-ne-suffit-pas-a-reveler",
    "en": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/risques-rares-ce-que-experience-ne-suffit-pas-a-reveler-en",
    "de": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/risques-rares-ce-que-experience-ne-suffit-pas-a-reveler-de",
    "it": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/risques-rares-ce-que-experience-ne-suffit-pas-a-reveler-it"
  },
  "relatedPages": {
    "programme": "https://www.shr.swiss/formation/prise-de-decision/berne",
    "city": "https://www.shr.swiss/formations-ville/berne",
    "blog": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog"
  },
  "citationPolicy": "Citation autorisée avec mention « SHR — Swiss Human Resources » et lien vers l'article."
}