Human behaviour is not defined only by healthy routines like eating well or exercising. It is also shaped by risk behaviours: drinking, smoking, gambling, porn addiction, unsafe sex, reckless driving, eating disorders, drug use and so on. These actions carry potential harm, often long-term but are maintained by short-term rewards.

How people perceive and evaluate their own risky behaviour depends heavily on memory. As we have seen in previous articles, memory is not neutral. It is limited, biased and shaped by context. Instead of accurately tracking every drink, cigarette or bet, working memory compresses and distorts. Some episodes loom large in the mind, while other vanish. A single extreme event anchors identity. Mood colours recall and social desirability pressures reshape what is remembered or reported.

This article explores how the major working memory biases, such as recency, salience, mood-congruence, averaging, interference, anchoring, omission, satisficing and social/self-schema effects, shape self-perception of risk behaviours.

Recency Bias: The False Sense of Control

Recency bias gives disproportionate weight to the latest episodes.

• Overestimating progress: A person who has abstained for a week feels they have “turned a corner”, forgetting months or heavy use.

• Exaggerating lapses: After one relapse, someone may feel they are “back at square one”, despite weeks of prior abstinence.

In both directions, recency distorts the long-term picture. Risk is either underestimated, because recent restraint dominates, or overestimated, because a recent lapse overshadows broader progress.

Salience and Vividness: Dramatic Episodes Dominate

Risk behaviours are often remembered not by their frequency but by the most vivid episodes.

• Alcohol: A frightening blackout, humiliating incident or hospitalisation overshadows ordinary nights of moderate drinking.

• Gambling: A big win or devastating loss defines the narrative, while dozens of smaller bets are forgotten.

• Unsafe sex: A pregnancy scare or STI test dominates recall, regardless of more routine exposures.

Salience means that memory exaggerates the impact of rare but intense events, while neglecting the steady accumulation of lower-level risks.

Mood-Congruent Recall and Current State Bias

Current mood shapes what comes to mind.

• Negative states of mind: When feeling low, risky episodes loom large. A drinker recalls every failure to quite, reinforcing guilt and hopelessness. A gambler remembers losses, intensifying despair.

• Positive states of mind: In good moods, the risks fade. A smoker recalls only the social enjoyment of cigarettes, not the breathlessness or financial cost.

This mood-dependence makes risk perception volatile: the same history can look dangerous one day and harmless the next.

Averaging and Neglect of Variability

When summarising across time, people compress behaviour into simple averages, smoothing out fluctuations.

• Binge-abstinence cycles: Someone who drinks heavily on weekends but not during the week may report “moderate use”. The volatility, i.e. periods of risk followed by abstinence, vanishes into a misleading average.

• Occasional bursts: A gambler who abstains for months but then spends heavily in one weekend may still describe themselves as “occasional”

Averaging conceals the very fluctuations that make risk behaviours harmful: sharp peaks of excess that cannot be seen when flattened into an average.

Interference and Overlap: Blurred Boundaries

Risk behaviours often overlap, leading to confusion in recall.

• Co-use: Alcohol and cannabis together, or gambling while drinking, create blurred memories. Which behaviour caused which consequence? Working memory cannot disentangle overlapping episodes.

• Symptoms overlap: Hangovers, fatigue, anxiety and poor sleep all blend together, making it hard to attribute consequences accurately.

This interference makes risk patterns harder to recognise. Consequences are misattributed, or ignored altogether, because the behaviours overlap in time.

Anchoring to Extremes: Defining the Self by Peaks

Extreme events act as anchors, shaping the narrative of risk.

• Negative anchoring: A single overdose, car accident or huge financial loss defines identity as “an addict” or a “problem gambler”, even if baseline behaviour is less severe.

• Positive anchoring: A period of abstinence, such as “I once quite for six months”, anchors identity as capable of control, even if the present reality is relapse.

Anchoring makes risk perception unstable: the exceptional overshadows the ordinary, either inflating or deflating self-assessment.

Omission: The Invisible Daily Risk

Because memory cannot hold everything, routine, low-level risks are dropped.

• Alcohol: the “extra glass” with dinner vanishes from recall, even if it appears nightly.

• Smoking: A few cigarettes at breaks are forgotten; only packs consumed in one sitting are remembered.

• Gambling: Small daily bets vanish, while big wins or losses are recalled.

Omission leads to systematic underestimation of cumulative exposure. The danger is not recognised because it is made up of small, easily forgotten acts.

Satisficing and Cognitive Shortcuts

When reflecting on risky behaviour is uncomfortable or cognitively demanding, people default to easy labels.

• Alcohol: “I only drink socially” replaces a careful tally of units.

• Gambling: “I only play for fun” substitutes for recalling time and money spent.

• Smoking: “I’m cutting down” is a shortcut that avoids recalling actual frequency.

These shortcuts reduce cognitive strain and emotional discomfort but at the cost of accuracy.

Social Desirability and Self-Schema Bias

Risk behaviours are especially vulnerable to self-presentation pressures.

• Social desirability: People minimise what they recall and report to avoid stigma. A drinker underestimates intake when talking to a doctor. A smoker frames consumption as “light”. A gambler downplays losses to family.

• Self-schema: People recall episodes that fit their identity. Someone who sees themselves as “responsible” remembers restraint, not lapses. Someone who identifies as “addicted” recalls failures, not successes.

These biases inject motivation and self-image into recall, further distorting perception.

Pulling It Together

The biases combine to create systematic distortions:

• Underestimation of risk: Omission, satisficing and social desirability ensure that small, frequent risky acts drop out of memory.

• Overemphasis on extremes: Salience and anchoring inflate the significance of rare but vivid episodes.

• Volatility of perception: Mood and recency make self-assessment swing between optimism and despair.

• Blurring of causes: Interference makes it difficult to link consequences to the right behaviours.

The result is that risk behaviours are remembered not as steady patterns but as distorted stories, oscillating between minimisation and exaggeration, filtered through mood, identity and stigma.

Implications for Risk Reduction

Understanding these biases highlights why people misjudge their risk and struggle to change.

• They underestimate cumulative harm. Omission hides the small, routine risks that add up over time.

• They overreact to extremes. A blackout may cause panic, but once the vivid memory fades, so does motivation to change.

• They average away volatility. Binge-abstinence cycles are reframed as moderation, concealing danger.

• They reshape memory to protect identity. Self-schema and social desirability lead to selective recall.

For interventions, the implications are clear:

• Use objective tracking: diaries, apps or sensors provide records that bypass biased recall.

• Highlight patterns, not just peaks: Showing cumulative totals and variability counters omission and averaging.

• Address mood and identity: Support should acknowledge that risk perception shifts with state and self-schema and frame change in ways that align with identity.

• Normalise honesty: Reducing stigma around disclosure helps counter social desirability pressures.

By designing risk-reduction strategies with memory’s limits in mind, we can help people see their behaviour more clearly and act more effectively.

Conclusion

Risk behaviours are not remembered in proportion to their true frequency or danger. Instead, they are filtered through the limits of working memory. Recency, salience, mood, averaging, interference, anchoring, omission, satisficing and social desirability all distort perception.

• Small, routine risks vanish.

• Dramatic episodes loom large.

• Perceptions swing with mood and recent experience.

• Identity and social pressures reshape recall.

The result is a biased narrative of risk, sometimes minimising, sometimes exaggerating, rarely balanced. If we want people to recognise and reduce their risks, we cannot rely on memory alone. We must provide tools and contexts that correct for these distortions, making cumulative behaviour visible, variability clear and honest reflection safe.

Risk is about what they remember, as well as what people do. And memory, by nature, is biased.

Thank you for reading,

Mark Gibson

Clermont-Ferrand, France

September 2025