Reed & Mackay, established in 1962, is a global, service-led corporate travel and event management company headquartered in London. Specializing in high-touch services for sectors like finance, legal and insurance, they offer tailored travel solutions, VIP services and event management, supported by their own technology platform.

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They invited Neuroformed Ltd to contribute to their &Beyond event in the magnificent ballroom of the Pan Pacific Hotel in the City of London.

 

We were charged with the mission of explaining the impact of various personality traits on the perception of risk. The foundation of this keynote talk are insights from the neuroeconomic research literature which outline how the human brain evaluates the pros and cons of different options in any decision making scenario.

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The risk perception gap describes how warped the typical human's sense of risk perception is. Certain threats are perceived as being significantly more risky than they are in reality and others that really do pose a significant threat to life and limb are perceived as being much less risky. For example, we tend to be more nervous about travelling by plane compared to getting from A to B in a car, yet the risk to life and limb associated with travelling by road is statistically much much higher than air travel.

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Reed and Mackay know only too well how to mitigate against the threats of travel disruption on behalf of their clients and when problems do occur they are extremely well positioned to limit the negative impact. So they were keen for us to share with their clients and colleagues how various aspects of personality can impact on risk perception.

 

The best researched and most reliable personality profiling tool is the five factor model, consisting of Openness to new experiences, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. And it turns out that the latest research literature indicates that those who score high on openness and extraversion tend to underestimate risks​​, while those who score high on conscientiousness, agreeableness and neuroticism tend to overestimate risks. It can be extremely useful to bear this in mind when communicating with different stakeholders.

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The feedback from this talk was excellent and many audiences members mentioned how refreshing it was to be able to take such a different perspective on their day-to-day work life. And we were delighted to be able to expand the Neuroscience of Decision Making subject matter, that has proven so popular with so many clients over the years, into this fascinating new area.

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To discuss how your company could engage Neuroformed Ltd to provide similar support for your campaign, please don't hesitate to contact us.