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Despite strong advancements in construction safety performance over the past few decades, injuries still occur at an unacceptable rate. Researchers have shown that risk-taking behavior, originating mainly from inaccurate perception and unacceptable tolerance of safety risk, is a significant factor in a majority of construction injuries. Based on psychology research that suggests cognitive interactions between emotions and risk perception, the hypothesis was formed that there are objectively measureable differences in construction safety risk perception between people in different emotional states. To test this hypothesis, a controlled experiment was designed and conducted that (1) induced various positive and negative emotions in 69 subjects using validated movie excerpts; (2) measured emotional states using a validated post-film questionnaire; (3) exposed participants to construction hazards within a high fidelity virtual …