The problem is that your assessment of risks also depends on your valuation of the underlying issues. For the sake of argument, suppose that someone considers

The problem is that your assessment of risks also depends on your valuation of the underlying issues. For the sake of argument, suppose that someone considers a 15% chance of going broke and having to live with their parents to be a "moderate" financial risk. Somebody else considers a 30% chance of the same thing to be a "small" financial risk. It's possible that the latter person has a higher risk tolerance. But it's also possible that they just like their parents a lot and wouldn't mind living with them as much as the first person. My instinctive answer would be that most people consider themselves to be cautious or perhaps even cowardly - because, by nature, you pay the most attention to the risks that bother you the most, and if your internal, subjective mental process is to always avoid those risks, you will feel like a cautious person, even if there are other objectively-measurable risks that you are not avoiding.