Psychology and the Concept of Risk: Studies Published Between 1999 and 2010

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to understand how the concept of risk has been used in researches in the area of Psychology, in the last eleven years, in Brazil. A review of journals qualis A, B and C (CAPES), published between 1999 and 2010 and available in a virtual library was made. The analysis was divided in three stages: classification of articles according to the explicitness of the concept of risk; classification in accordance with the themes of interest; identification of individual or social paradigms. One hundred and twenty eight articles were analyzed: 36 presented an explicit concept of risk, 33 presented risk as the focus of discussion, and 59 referred superficially to the risk itself. The themes more frequently found were related to the life cicle, physical or emotional illness and analysis of the discourse on risk and work; 116 papers (90,6 %) presented the social paradigm as conceptual base. The importance that the studies better define the concept of risk and the presuppositions that sustain their theoretical and methodological choices is highlighted.