Category: Acceptance

This study involves exploring the two different ways on how people react to the idea of death: anxiety and acceptance and how it affects an individual’s perception taking into consideration the association of age, gender, and religiosity. The following theories and concepts are used to explain this behavior: The Death Anxiety Scale and Death Acceptance Scale; Three-component Model of Death Acceptance; Wong’s components of death anxiety; Terror Management Theory; Existential Theory. Death anxiety and death acceptance are the two theoretically identified ways of how people respond with the idea of death or dying that are usually associated with age, gender and religiosity which consequently have psychological implications to individuals and society.

Laboring to survive in the present, we simultaneously think about death because we know, of all things, death is the most inevitable thing in life. However, our feelings and beliefs about mortality differ because there are a lot of factors that influence our perceptions such as age, gender, and religiosity. There are people who dread about the idea of death while other people learn to accept it. These two different ways of understanding death can lead to different effects to our emotions and attitudes including our relationships with other people (Kastenbaum, 1986).

Death anxiety and death acceptance are the two theoretically identified ways of how people respond with the idea of death or dying. People have been trying to create a scale that encompasses the attitudes about the prospect of death the process of dying. Attempting to get a single measurement that encompasses fears about the prospect of death and the process of dying, the first scale called Templer’s Death Anxiety Scale was developed and “psychometrically-tested” (Harding, 2005, p. 253). “The Death Anxiety Scale draws on a range of fears related to death, including concerns about death, and fear of corpses and the process of dying” (Hill & Hood, 1999, p. 8). However, the fear of death was found to be incompatible with the psychological acceptance of its inevitability according to Ray and Najman (1974) who suggested instruments that provides measurement of death acceptance (Harding, 2005).They developed the Death Acceptance Scale and conducted a study where they compared the results to the Death Anxiety Scale. The results supported their notion that death acceptance and death anxiety are actually two different ways of an individual’s attitude toward the idea of death or dying (Harding, 2005).

Individual attitudes to death and dying vary because of many factors (MacLeod et al., 2016). One variable related to the level of death anxiety or death acceptance for an individual is age. Despite the complexity of the relationship between death attitudes and age, some research indicates that age is negatively correlated with anxiety because findings indicate that the elderly may experience ambiguous emotions toward death as compared to younger people (Depaola et al., 2003). Another variable is an individual’s gender. According to a study conducted regarding the role of gender in death anxiety (MacLeod et al., 2016), gender has a significant influence on the levels of death anxiety. Accordingly, female respondents were found to be more anxious about their own death and the death of someone they care for as compared to males. Lastly, various theories suggests that there is a significant connection between death attitudes and religiosity where “death anxiety is lowest among very religious and irreligious people and highest among uncertain individuals” as supported by the Terror Management Theory (Jong et al., 2018, p. 5).

“Death anxiety is considered as a basic fear underlying the development of many psychological conditions and emotional reactions to individuals and society” (MacLeod et al., 2016, p. 339). Death anxiety has significantly contributed to psychological issues and sleep problems for the past decades (Yalom, 1980). The inevitability and unpredictability of death cause people to feel horror, and this fear of death is a fundamental source of anxiety (Yalom, 1980) while mismanagement of death anxiety aggravates symptoms of mental disorders (Arndt et al., 2005). According to Gubar (2019), this anxiety can lead to both positive and negative effects as to how we live our lives every day. “Thinking of their own death is the ultimate struggle for all human beings” (Solomon et al., 2000, p. 200). This thought of mortality is the most certain and universal idea yet it is not usually apparent or observable. It actually comes as psychological symptoms which are often unconscious or denied (Yalom, 1980).

1. Death Anxiety

Death anxiety is a commonly-used term to describe dread or uneasiness generated with an individual’s awareness of death (Lehto & Stein, 2019). Death-anxiety was explained by Gubar (2019) as fear of self-loss, fear of missed opportunities, fear of suffering or even fear of the unknown. Wong (2008) outlined the components of death anxiety as follows: “The finality of death; the uncertainty of what follows; annihilation anxiety or fear of non-existence; the ultimate loss; fear of leaving loved ones behind; fear of the pain and loneliness in dying; fear of an untimely and violent death; fear of failing to complete life work; fear of judgments and retributions.” (Wong 2008, p. 67)

According to a study conducted by Cai et al. (2017), through principle-components analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, four aspects of death anxiety was discovered namely: Dysphoria, Death Intrusion, Fear of Death, and Avoidance of Death. Dysphoria is usually described as the feeling of being emotion tired and upset whenever an individual thinks about death. Death intrusion is when a person imagines or have nightmares regarding his or her own death. Fear of scared on the other hand is when someone has a fright of terror whenever he thinks about his own or someone’s death. Lastly, avoidance of death is an attempt that an individual does in order to not think or talk about death.

Measures of death anxiety are diverse because of the significant development of the scale and sub-scale aspects regarding the study. As mentioned above, the first scale developed in 1970 was Templer’s Death Anxiety Scale (DAS). However, the definition of death anxiety has “evolved from uni-dimensional to a multidimensional through the development of measuring techniques for death anxiety” (Cai et al., 2017, p. 8). Factor structures have varied through developing research and increasing evidence until they conceptualized a “multidimensional construct” of death anxiety in 2005 (Cai et al., 2017).

2. Death Acceptance

Death acceptance was defined by Klug and Sinha (1987) as “being relatively at ease with one’s awareness of personal mortality” (p. 229) or “the deliberate intellectual acknowledgement of the prospect of one’s own death and the positive emotional assimilation of the consequences” (p. 230). They presented two components of death acceptance: confrontation and integration. Confrontation of death is the cognitive component; it is actually accepting and facing an individual’s own death (Neimeyer, 1994). It is more about the “prospect of death and not the process of dying” (Klug and Sinha, 1987, p. 230). On the other hand, integration of death is the negative or positive effective reaction to confrontation. Consequently, they developed a scale which aims to provide a measurement of the degree of death acceptance through measuring these two components of death acceptance called the Klug Death Acceptance Scale.

With the aim of providing a scale measurement for death acceptance, Wong introduced a Three-component Model of Death Acceptance (1994):

1. Neutral Acceptance – It is neither welcomed nor feared. Neutral acceptance depicts a point of view that considers “death as a fundamental part of life; someone simply accepts it as one of the inevitable facts of life” (Neimeyer, et al. 2004 p. 309);
2. Approach-oriented Acceptance – Death is considered as a passageway to a happy afterlife. It implies belief of the afterlife where an “optimistic future time perspective correlated with it leads to an optimistic view on death” (Neimeyer, et al. 2004 p. 309);
3. Escape-oriented Acceptance – Death is regarded as an escape from a painful existence. “It usually results from poverty, mental condition, or severe living conditions that are felt unbearable by the individual where death looks like a good alternative to life” (Neimeyer, et al. 2004 p. 309).

3. Associations of Death Attitudes to Age, Gender, and Religiosity

Gender

The majority of the research conducted about gender’s role in death anxiety conclude that females tend to have higher level of death anxiety as compared to males. The main reason for this is that “women tend to view death in more emotional terms whereas men tend to view perceive death in more cognitive terms” (Depaola et al. 2003 p. 338).

It shows that the female participants displayed a higher level of Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS). MFODS is a scale measurement developed by Neimeyer (1994) using eight factors to compare death anxiety by gender. These factors are fear of dying, fear of death, fear of being destroyed, fear of death of significant others, fear of the unknown, fear of consciousness when dead, fear for the body after death and fear of premature death.

Religiosity

According to the Terror Management Theory, there is an impressive amount of evidence that religiosity correlates with death anxiety. Accordingly, “death anxiety prompts religiosity which in turn mitigates death anxiety or in other words, religiosity increases with increased death anxiety for non-believers while death anxiety decreases with increased religiosity among believers” (Jong et al., 2018, p. 4). This is commonly called the inverted-U relationship where “death anxiety is lowest among very religious and irreligious people and highest among uncertain individuals” (Jong et al., 2018, p. 5). One possible reason for this as explained by Homan (1941) is because non-religious individuals can become more concerned about their death because they are afraid of the post-mortem punishment which will consequently result to them becoming more religious. However, there is an exception with atheists who completely do not believe in religion and after-life who probably will give no concern about death. On the other hand, very religious individuals will be less worried about their death because they are certain of their salvation after death.

On a religious note, someone who opted to accept death lives a more spiritual life (Roman Catholic Spiritual Direction, 2014). We can achieve a sense of fulfillment that we don’t have to worry if we die today or tomorrow if we choose to live every day with righteousness; often times, a person who has fully accepted the idea of death can have a peace of mind compared to one who dreads about it.

4. Conclusion

Death anxiety and death acceptance are the two theoretically identified ways of how people respond with the idea of death which have been discovered to have psychological implications to individuals and are usually associated with age, gender and religiosity.

Being conscious of our feelings, sentiments, perceptions in the body, and our environment in each moment is called as mindfulness. This paper informs us about how mindfulness can help us to minimize our anxiety, stress, and in emotion management. This topic is interesting to me because this information regarding mindfulness is new to me, and if I use it in my life, then I can lead a healthier life.

Precisely the connection of mindfulness and signs of depression and anxiety is studied and an experiment is conducted along in which basic roles of awareness, acceptance, impulse control, and emotion regulation are observed. This experiment was performed on 333 Chinese population between 16 to 28 years of age, including both genders. In this experiment, mindfulness is described as being conscious and accepting negative emotions. The association between consciousness and acceptance of negative emotions and mindfulness is observed in this experiment.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an 8-week meditation program known to diminish anxiety, depression, and progress psychological well-being. To know further how mindfulness can help minimize anxiety, observational study about mindfulness-based stress reduction program was conducted. This study shows that people undertaking this program undoubtedly get profited with stress minimization. The studies mentioned above were conducted in a controlled environment through a questionnaire with a stable state of mind of participants. If the identical examination was conducted in a distressing atmosphere with a state of mind is disturbed purposefully, would be results obtained then similar?

Introduction

In this chaotic world, people are continually doing their routines since morning they get up to the minute; they fall asleep. The age, gender, or profession does not affect these routines. These tasks were performed without being aware of them. Being aware of our current situation, whether it is a process, thought, or situation is termed mindfulness. Mindfulness is taken from Zen, Vipassana, and Tibetan meditation techniques. The term mindfulness is built on the word “Sati” in Pali language and the word “Smriti” in the Sanskrit language, which means “remembrance”. Remembering our thoughts while doing day to day tasks is so-called mindfulness. This is done at any instant in a day. For example, while drinking a glass of water reminding our consciousness that: “I am drinking this glass of water and this will help me to quench my thirst’, – this simple thought of being aware of drinking water can induce a drastic change in our body as well as in mind. Similarly, this can be applied to every area of our life, and if we do it, it will change our life dramatically.

Unfortunately, people are unable to do these simple tasks. Their mind is performing tasks which are different from their physical world. Mind and body are continually fighting to perform on single job. The mind will either wander in future fantasies or historical experiences. This will lead to stress in an individual as he or she is performing a job with the only brain without emotion in it. If a person is completing tasks without being aware of what he or she is doing, then that tasks became a mechanical thing, and it degrades in its quality. If we start our day with such a collection of quality-less tasks and end with same, then we find ourselves in a chaotic environment where we cannot find any satisfaction or peace. This will again lead distress in an person.

Depression is a common mental sickness. Mindfulness can be an effective weapon versus depression and anxiety. A study carried out which spotlight that there is a longitudinal association within mindfulness and depressive signs through mediating processes like consciousness, acceptance, impulse control, and emotion management. A similar association is found out midst mindfulness and anxiety indications. The study urges the employ of mindfulness actions in psychological healthiness as well; it enlarges the mindfulness literature (Cheung & Ng, 2018).

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program is a meditation program which helps to deal with stress-related signs. It supports to improvement in depression, anxiety, and sleep quality. This observational study carried out by Jeferry M. Greeson about MBSR affirms that mindfulness is enlarged among people who followed this program, which leads to decrease sleep disturbance and decreased stress-related indications (Greeson et al., 2018).

Recently I came across a book 10-Minute Mindfulness: 71 Habits for Living in the Present Moment by S. J. Scott and Barrie Davenport. This book illustrates several approaches for mindfulness, which are simple and easy to do in 10 minutes time span (Scott & Davenport, 2017). While reading this book, I develop my interest in mindfulness, and then I started to study this concept in detail.

Mindfulness and Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety (Cheung & Ng, 2018)

Mindfulness is getting alert of the situation, accepting it, and responding according to it. Depression indicators consist of loss of interest in ideas, once pleasurable, difficulty in admitting undesirable circumstances, restlessness, and irritability. If we perceive intensely, then indications of depression complement mindfulness. The study conducted which shows this association using mediating processes like acceptance, consciousness, impulse control, and emotion regulation. The study is took place in the following fashion (Cheung & Ng, 2018):

Method: A total of 333 Chinese residents participated in this study in Hong Kong. These people are in the age range of 18 to 26. This includes 95 men and 238 women. The study is completed through a questionnaire in consecutive two years, four times in six months gap. Multi-group Path Analysis also Bootstrapping methods were applied to realize the results of the study.

Measures: Succeeding attributes were quantified midst the contributor of this study.

1. Mindfulness
2. Awareness of negative emotions
3. Acceptance of negative emotions
4. Impulse Control difficulties
5. Limited Access to Emotion Regulation Strategies
6. Depressive symptoms
7. Anxiety symptoms

Data Analysis: All above study variables are preliminarly analyzed for zero-order correlations, means, and standard deviations. The fundamental hypothesis of this study is then tested by multi-group path analysis. MPLUS, Version 7 is an analytical software which is used to do exploratory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, item response theory analysis, survival analysis, growth modeling, complex survey data analysis (WWW3). This software exercised to observe the path model of mediation processes like consciousness, attention, impulse control problems, and little approach to emotion regulation strategies among mindfulness and alteration results, including depressive and anxiety indications.

Result: The results obtained on the connection based on – mindfulness and little admittance to sentiment guideline, mindfulness, and depressive signs, mindfulness, and anxiety signs. The bootstrapping method was modified to test data of the mediating functions of consciousness, acceptance, and impulse control difficulties among mindfulness and limited admittance to emotion guideline approaches. One thousand bootstrap samples were tested with substitutes. The incidental effects of mindfulness and partial admittance to emotion guideline policies were significant before bootstrapping. Then after bootstrapping the indirect outcomes of mindfulness on partial access to emotion guideline approaches were examined. The outcomes acclaim that mindfulness is linked with awareness, reception of negative emotions with lesser difficulties in impulse control, and larger admittance to emotion regulation stratagems.

Correspondingly, the unintended outcomes of mindfulness and depressive signs are recognized with the bootstrapping process. The answers suggest that greater consciousness and acceptance of emotions, which in turn associated with lower impulse control difficulties were further associated with greater access to emotion regulation strategies and fewer depressive signs. However, the results show that the indirect effects of mindfulness and anxiety signs are not significant. Hence the process used here does not find it useful to obtain results.

As the above study demonstrations us that there is a correlation between mindfulness and depression and anxiety signs, additional study using MBSR program is carried out to understand whether increased mindfulness will decrease depression indicators or not.

Mindful Based Stress Reduction Program (Greeson et al., 2018)

“Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment’, – Jon Kabat-Zinn (WWW1.)

Professor Jon Kabat Zinn started this program in the 1970s. This is a meditation program which helps individuals to minimize stress, anxiety, depression, and pain. It is eight weeks long program which comprises of 150 minutes daily practice of mindfulness, meditation, and yoga with one complete day session between sixth and seventh week. It also embraces 45 minutes of everyday homework practices.

J.M. Greeson conducted an observational study about mindfulness and effects of mindfulness on two measures i.e., sleep quality as well as depression indications. Author hypotheses that sleep aspect, depression warning sign, and mindfulness are linked. Through the MBSR program, the suggestion of this study was scrutinized, and participants who undergone through the MBSR program showed increase mindfulness besides decrease sleep disturbance then depressive indications. This study was conducted in the following fashion:

Method: 322 individuals who enrolled in the MBSR program participated in this study. They completed a self-report question before and after appearing the MBSR program through the internet. The participants of this study were mainly women who were well educated and working. Out of these participants, more than 50 percent of participants inhibit the signs of depression and poor sleep quality. The survey is conducted one week before the first MBSR session and one week after the last MBSR session. The survey result was observed by ViewFlash software. The study is followed by MBSR program conducted by trained professionals who have significant experience in meditation field.

Measures: Following measures were recorded during the study. These measures are as follows.

1. Cognitive and Affective Scale-Revised
2. Cohen-Hoberman Inventory of Physical Symptoms (CHIPS)
3. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI)
4. Ruminative Responses Scale (RRS)
5. White bear suppression inventory
6. Acceptance and action questionnaire
7. Emotion regulation questionnaire

Data analysis: SPSS software version 24 is used for data analysis for this study. The statistical significance of pre-post MBSR changes in mindfulness, stress indicators, and emotion regulation are examined through paired tests. The direct association between these variables are examined via Bivariate correlations. Partial correlations are also used to test whether hypothesized associations between changes in mindfulness and changes in stress indications and sleep quality, respectively, remained significant when controlling for changes in each trans-diagnostic outcome measure. In the end, seven covariates were added to the partial correlation analyses to test whether observed associations were independent of demographic characteristics such as age, gender, education, household income, and employment status, as well as prior meditation experience and expectation to benefit from the MBSR.

Results: Direct association is established between increased mindfulness and decreased stress-related indicators and an increase in sleep quality.

Conclusion

Mindfulness meditation is started in the 1970s. Through a couple of decades, this technique significantly emerged. It is considered as one of the mind-body intervention methods. This technique cultivates positive psychology in an individual. According to a blog post in Positive Psychology Program, mindfulness not only promotes well-being but also improves working memory. It can be a self-care tool for an individual or wellness busters for a group of employees (WWW2). From the study, it is seen that mindfulness can decrease signs of depression (Cheung & Ng, 2018). Another study which also indicates that the MBSR program increases your mindfulness, which in turn decreases depression indications and improves sleep quality (Greeson et al., 2018).

Above researches or studies were performed keeping positive effects of mindfulness, and according to that, hypotheses were stated and checked. However, are there any adverse effects of mindfulness? Has anybody till date observed them, and if so, are there experiments or studies were conducted to examine them? These unanswered questions need to be answered so that we can use mindfulness with its full potential while keeping its positive effects and mindfully discarding its adverse or side effects.

References:

1. Cheung, R. Y. et al., (2019). Mindfulness and symptoms of depression and anxiety: The underlying roles of awareness, acceptance, impulse control, and emotion regulation. Mindfulness, 10(6), 1124-1135.
2. Greeson, J. M. et al., (2018). Mindfulness meditation targets transdiagnostic symptoms implicated in stress-related disorders: Understanding relationships between changes in mindfulness, sleep quality, and physical symptoms. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2018. Volume 2018, Article ID 4505191, 10 pages.
3. WWW1. Online Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
4. WWW2. 7 Great Benefits of Mindfulness in Positive Psychology Accessed Apr 9, 2019.
5. WWW3. Mplus at a Glance. < https://www.statmodel.com/glance.shtml>

Growing up I seemed to always be accused of being lazy and stupid. I suppose this day was every other average day, Ms. Robinson, my kindergarten teacher called my parents after school to discuss my behavior issues. “Your daughter refuses to carry out my simple instructions when I ask her to silently read or to complete homework”, – I remembered hearing this as I sat next to my parents. Holding back my tears, I silently asked myself: “Why am I always called here after school, every day? What did I do wrong?”

I officially learned I had a learning disability when I was seven, which made it difficult for me to carry out specific instructions from my teachers. I remembered sitting at the dinner table while my parents talked about my diagnoses, feeling sad and depressed. What was a learning disability? Does it mean that I would never make friends, learn to write, or be good in math? All I knew was that there was something wrong inside of me, forever. I knew this because I was treated differently, I had no friends and I could not spell, read or answer questions quickly.

Unlike my father, who had friends that protected him and supported him during his high school years, I had friends that will often abandon me out of annoyance. I recall the day when I was invited to eat lunch with a group of girls for the first time. I was unbelievably happy as hope overwhelmed me that I could make genuine friends. After learning I had a learning disability they started calling me lazy and stupid. After a while, I began to believe them. Sometimes, I just gave up. I could not write, spell, or read, or answer questions as quickly as the people in my class. I hated myself for having a learning disability. I longed the day where I can be like everybody else, I kept telling myself if I try hard enough I can be “normal” too. But at each failure I encounter, I find myself more and more disappointed.

Although I didn’t have the support of my friends, I was fortunate to have the support of my family. During my toughest times, I had my parents to talk to and they supported and encourage me to be myself. My mom never expect me to be better than anyone else’s. Like Jeffrey Star, his mother encouraged him to be himself, even when he was made fun of for wearing makeup to school. I remembered one day, I came home crying because I got a low mark on my math test. I was upset I could not prove myself to be as smart as the people in my class. But my parents, on the other hand, were proud of me, they said that I tried and that was enough.

When I graduated from elementary school, I was happy that I can start a new life but I was afraid of what the future would hold. My first year was like a roller coaster ride as successes and failures were unpredictable to me, but I tried my hardest with a positive attitude. I started to focus on my weaknesses and work to improve them, that was my first step towards accepting myself. I rarely told anyone I had a learning disability since they usually saw it as an excuse. Instead, I pretended I did not have a learning disability when I was dealing with it every day which was very stressful for me.

As I worked on my weaknesses, I began to see my own progress and potential. Looking back, I was praised a lot for my artistic skills and my ability to think outside the box. I might not excel at reading or spelling but I am good at solving complex math problems. I often forgot the formulas of math equations but I learned ways to compensate for my disabilities. I would rewrite my notes when I’m studying to help me remember. This was enough for me to realize I was not “stupid”. I soon learned to embrace my strengths and my weaknesses, I acknowledged and accepted my learning disability. When I told people about my learning disability, I felt relief knowing I am true to myself. It took a lot of adjusting but I am not sad or ashamed, I am happy.

Self-acceptance is hard when you grew up in a very strict environment just like the students from residential schools. During the 1870s, Aboriginal children’s across Canada were forced to go to residential schools. The purpose of residential schools was to remove their Aboriginal culture and assimilate to Canadian culture. Students had their haircut short and were prohibited in speaking their own language. Teachers would often resort to violence in order to remove the Aboriginal culture. This can be related to the struggles I had when I was dealing with my learning disability as people would accuse me of being stupid and lazy. In 1990, the last residential school was shut down but these schools caused great mental harm to Aboriginal. Fortunately, some residential school survivors have found peace with themselves and accepted their aboriginal culture just like how I have accepted my disability. Accepting ourselves brings a better understanding of ourselves and we are able to see our values and potential. We will be more motivated to make changes and improve our weaknesses, this can create a positive healthy mindset and make us truly happy.

Part of me still wishes to live a “normal” life where my learning disability never existed. Part of me wishes to never have experienced the pain. But as I worked on my weaknesses, I saw my potential, I started to see myself for who I am. I grew more confident as time passes and I’m not afraid to take risks anymore. I am happy because I accept my learning disability and therefore, I accept myself for who I am.

It indicates the standard for evaluating the risk that is adopted by decision-makers. Some risks are accepted in case it is cheaper to leave the asset unprotected due to a specific risk rather than make an effort to protect it. This decision is not made out of ignorance as all options are analyzed carefully before accepting the outcome. The most common criteria are the lower likelihood or low consequence where the data or resource is protected by laws or regulations or there is no risk to human life or safety. It is widely used and is not formally in ISO documents on risk management. Mitigating is one of the methods of lowering the threats to an acceptable level.

Any organization can respond to or treat it in any of the following ways –

• Acceptance
• Accordance
• Mitigation
• Transfer.

For example – In any kind of emergency, an organization might accept the risk associated with unfiltered connection to external communication provided for a limited time and then avoid the risk by cutting the connection and applying security controls.

Such terms are not preferred by the regulators in the US and the UK. The AICE expressed its views on it and said risk tolerance is preferred in comparison to risk acceptance. Risk can be acceptable – which means, not normally requiring further reduction, tolerable ( which means the threat is as low as reasonably practicable taking costs and benefits into account) or unacceptable (which means higher risks need stringent control and it is only permitted in exceptional circumstances).

Different levels of risks are determined by relating the term to tolerance, justifiable and negligible. The higher level is unacceptable and lower is acceptable.

Applicable definitions are divided into 4 categories–

• Individual– The hazard posed to a single person.
• Societal – The danger to the group of people often expressed, in terms of, the frequency distribution of multiple causality events.
• Voluntary – It is tolerated by someone asking to obtain the benefits of an activity.
• Involuntary – The dangers imposed on someone, who does not directly benefit from the activity.

Individual risk criteria – People are prepared to accept a wide range of perils depending on their perception and benefits from the activity. Sometimes people are exposed to situations where there is no or low control over such threats and businesses need to set criteria to handle such involuntary sources. Public transportation like airports/air travel and railroads has predetermined criteria for handling such situations.

Safety is an important objective in society but it is not the only one and allocation of resources on safety must be balanced with the societal needs. Various government regulators have principles for risk acceptance criteria and there is an international framework for liquidity risk measurement standards and monitoring.

Such factors depend on the legal framework of the society and different legal framework may yield different criteria. A comparison of such regulations in the two European countries – the UK and the Netherlands are shown in legal and historical context. There are also acceptance criteria for occupational accidents where companies with major industrial hazards need to define the acceptance criteria for both individual and societal risks.