Cognitive Representation of Mountaineering Risks and Its Change by Expertise

Various risks exist during mountaineering. Appropriate representation of characteristics of risks is the basis of survival in such extreme environments. The aim of the present study is to clarify cognitive representation of risks of mountaineering and individual difference according to the experience by psychometric approach. Ninety-seven mountaineers, consisting of top-class leaders and prospective leaders who participated in the training courses of the National Mountaineering Training Center in Japan, were asked to evaluate nine target mountaineering risks repeatedly with nine judgment scales, and the responses were analyzed using three-mode principal component analysis (3MPCA). As a result, two types of risks, sudden hazardous risks (SHRs) and ubiquitous potential risks (UPRs), in target mode were identified, as were dread and controllability in the scale mode. Both dread and controllability for SHRs and UPRs were independent to some extent. The analysis revealed that the influence of leader experience on the cognitive dimensions differed between the risk types: controllability and dread for SHRs did not differ, and only dread for UPRs decreased with experience. The results would lead to deeper understanding of cognitive representation of personal risks that individuals are responsible for handling, and therefore would contribute to safety education and risk communication in mountaineering.