Risk assessment and serotonin: Animal models and human psychopathologies

•RA is defined situationally as a response to ambiguous threat, and functionally, as investigation/appraisal of threat stimuli and situations.•Human analogues of RA have variously been related to rumination; measured as eye-gaze tracking; and interpreted in terms of affective cognition.•Each of these analogues has been linked to anxiety, depression, or both.•Serotonin manipulations or individual differences in serotonin have been shown to modulate RA in animal models, and people in analogues of RA.•…suggesting that RA may provide a translationally sensitive animal model relevant to anxiety and depression.