Fear of commitment of self-help, Harvard psychologist Deborah DePaulo has written books such as "Singleism" on the stigmatization of single people. The use of the term "fear" or "phobia" imparts an inherent linguistic bias. It recasts specific lifestyle decisions (such as bachelorhood vs. marriage, or a conscious decision to remain childfree by choice) implicitly as generalised, irrational phobias while failing to identify, describe or address an individual's specific motives. For instance, the men's rights movement, citing high divorce rates and expensive alimony and legal costs, would speak not in terms of "fear of commitment" but of "marriage strike" to reflect their position that
Risk profoundly unknown circumstances. Fear is a response to perceived danger. Risk could be said to be the way we collectively measure and share this "true fear"—a fusion of rational doubt, irrational fear, and a set of unquantified biases from our own experience. The field of behavioural finance focuses on human risk-aversion, asymmetric regret, and other ways that human financial behaviour varies from what analysts call "rational". Risk in that case is the degree of uncertainty associated with a return on an asset. Recognizing and respecting the irrational influences on human decision making may do much to reduce disasters caused by