The variance is a statistical measure frequently used for analysis of dispersion in the data. This paper presents new types of variances that use Bonferroni means and ordered weighted averages in the aggregation process of the variance. The main advantage of this approach is that we can underestimate or overestimate the variance according to the attitudinal character of the decision-maker. The work considers several particular cases including the minimum and the maximum variance and presents some numerical examples. The article also develops some extensions and generalizations by using induced aggregation operators and generalized and quasi-arithmetic means. These approaches provide a more general framework that can consider a lot of other particular cases and a complex attitudinal character that could be affected by a wide range of variables. The study ends with an application of the new approach in a business decision-making problem regarding strategic analysis in enterprise risk management. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.