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Arnon Lotem of Tel Aviv University said animal-like risk-taking behavior had its advantages when people were living as cave-dwellers, but it poses new and potentially dangerous risk in the modern technology-driven world. Under natural conditions, people made decisions like other animals, Lotem said.

Now, for example, if a traffic light is turning yellow, people have to decide whether it is best to gun the engine and speed through the intersection, trusting that others will wait for their green, or to slow down and wait for the light?

"People are aware of the actual risks when driving through a light at an intersection, but unless they've already had a brush-with-death or a brush-with-a-traffic-cop, the perceived risk remains low, this is because in most cases nothing happens to the risk-taker. You save one minute, but you can lose everything. People don't do the math."

Lotem's study, published in the journal Nature, found that, presented with simple decision-making stimuli, people are not analyzing the complete situation based on logical rationales or statistics. Instead, they appear to be making decisions based on simple strategies for coping in nature, based mainly on personal experience.

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