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Abstract: Cultural Cognition refers to the disposition to conform one's beliefs about societal risks to one's preferences for how society should be organized. Based on surveys and experiments involving some 5,000 Americans, the Second National Risk and Culture Study presents empirical evidence of the effect of this dynamic in generating conflict about global warming, school shootings, domestic terrorism, nanotechnology, and the mandatory vaccination of school-age girls against HPV, among other issues. The Study also presents evidence of risk-communication strategies that counteract cultural cognition. Because nuclear power affirms rather than threatens the identity of persons who hold individualist values, for example, proposing it as a solution to global warming makes persons who hold such values more willing to consider evidence that climate change is a serious risk. Because people tend to impute credibility to people who share their values, persons who hold hierarchical and egalitarian values are less likely to polarize when they observe people who hold their values advocating unexpected positions on the vaccination of young girls against HPV. Such techniques can help society to create a deliberative climate in which citizens converge on policies that are both instrumentally sound and expressively congenial to persons of diverse values.
cultural cognition, risk perception, risk regulation, nuclear power, global warming, terrorism, gun control, school shootings, HPV, nanotechnology
Abstract: Why do white men fear various risks less than women and minorities? Known as the white male effect, this pattern is well documented but poorly understood. This paper proposes a new explanation: cultural status anxiety. The cultural theory of risk posits that individuals selectively credit and dismiss asserted dangers in a manner supportive of their preferred form of social organization. This dynamic, it is hypothesized, drives the white male effect, which reflects the risk skepticism that hierarchical and individualistic white males display when activities integral to their status are challenged as harmful. The paper presents the results of an 1800-person survey that confirmed that cultural worldviews moderate the impact of sex and race on risk perception in patterns consistent with status anxieties. It also discusses the implication of these findings for risk regulation and communication.
Abstract: Despite knowing little about nanotechnology (so to speak), members of the public readily form opinions on whether its potential risks outweigh its potential benefits. On what basis are they forming their judgments? How are their views likely to evolve as they become exposed to more information about this novel science? We conducted a survey experiment (N = 1,850) to answer these questions. We found that public perceptions of nanotechnology risks, like public perceptions of societal risks generally, are largely affect driven: individuals' visceral reactions to nanotechnology (ones likely based on attitudes toward environmental risks generally) explain more of the variance in individuals' perceptions of nanotechnology's risks and benefits than does any other influence. These views are not static: even a small amount of information can generate changes in perceptions. But how those perceptions change depends heavily on individuals' values. Using a between-subjects design, we found that individuals exposed to balanced information polarize along cultural and political lines relative to individuals not exposed to information. We discuss what these findings imply for understanding of risk perceptions generally and for the future of nanotechnology as a subject of political conflict and regulation.
risk, norms, cultural cognition, emotion, nanotechnology
Abstract: What dynamics shape public risk perceptions? What significance should such perceptions have in the formation of risk regulation? In Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005), Cass Sunstein catalogs a variety of cognitive and social mechanisms that he argues inflate public estimations of various societal risks. To counter the impact of irrational public fears, he advocates delegation of authority to politically insulated experts using economic cost-benefit analysis. Missing from Sunstein's impressive account, however, is any attention to the impact of cultural cognition, the tendency of individuals to form risk perceptions that reflect and reinforce their cultural worldviews. Relying on existing and original empirical research, we use this dynamic to develop an alternative cultural evaluator model, which better explains individual variation in risk perception, differences of opinions among experts, and the intensity of political conflict over risk than does Sunstein's irrational weigher model. Cultural cognition also complicates Sunstein's policy prescriptions. Because the public fears that Sunstein describes as irrational express cultural values, expert cost-benefit analysis does not merely insulate the law from factual error, as Sunstein argues; rather, it systematically detaches law from popular understandings of the ideal society. Indeed, the best defense of Sunstein's program might be just that: by eliding the role that risk regulation plays in endorsing contested cultural visions, expert cost-benefit analysis protects the law from a divisive and deeply illiberal form of expressive politics. The difficult task for those who understand the phenomenon of cultural cognition and who favor democratic modes of policymaking is to devise procedures that assure that popularly responsive risk regulation is both rational and respectful of diverse cultural worldviews.
Abstract: Why do white men fear various risks less than women and minorities? Known as the white male effect, this pattern is well documented but poorly understood. This paper proposes a new explanation: identity-protective cognition. Putting work on the cultural theory of risk together with work on motivated cognition in social psychology suggests that individuals selectively credit and dismiss asserted dangers in a manner supportive of their preferred form of social organization. This dynamic, it is hypothesized, drives the white male effect, which reflects the risk skepticism that hierarchical and individualistic white males display when activities integral to their cultural identities are challenged as harmful. The article presents the results of an 1,800-person study that confirmed that cultural worldviews interact with the impact of gender and race on risk perception in patterns that suggest cultural-identity-protective cognition. It also discusses the implication of these findings for risk regulation and communication.
white male effect, risk, risk perception, cultural cognition
Abstract: In a provocative 1987 article, Aaron Wildavsky asserted that culture operates as the fundamental orienting force in the generation of mass public opinion. The meanings and interpersonal associations that inhere in discrete ways of life, he argued, shape the heuristic processes by which politically unsophisticated individuals, in particular, choose what policies and candidates to support. We systematize Wildavsky's theory and integrate it with existing accounts of mass opinion formation. We also present the results of an original national survey (N = 1843), which found that the cultural orientations featured in Wildavsky's writings accounted for policy-related attitudes on gun control, environment, capital punishment, and gay marriage, even at low levels of political sophistication and after controlling for demographics, left-right ideology, and partisanship. By contrast, much of the predictive power of demographics, left-right ideology, and partisanship on policy attitudes dissipated after taking into account cultural orientations.
Heuristics, gun control, capital punishment, politics
Abstract: Modern theories in cognitive psychology and neuroscience indicate that there are two fundamental ways in which human beings comprehend risk. The analytic system uses algorithms and normative rules, such as probability calculus, formal logic, and risk assessment. It is relatively slow, effortful, and requires conscious control. The experiential system is intuitive, fast, mostly automatic, and not very accessible to conscious awareness. The experiential system enabled human beings to survive during their long period of evolution and remains today the most natural and most common way to respond to risk. It relies on images and associations, linked by experience to emotion and affect (a feeling that something is good or bad). This system represents risk as a feeling that tells us whether it's safe to walk down this dark street or drink this strange-smelling water. Proponents of formal risk analysis tend to view affective responses to risk as irrational. Current wisdom disputes this view. The rational and the experiential systems operate in parallel and each seems to depend on the other for guidance. Studies have demonstrated that analytic reasoning cannot be effective unless it is guided by emotion and affect. Rational decision making requires proper integration of both modes of thought. Both systems have their advantages, biases, and limitations. Now that we are beginning to understand the complex interplay between emotion and reason that is essential to rational behavior, the challenge before us is to think creatively about what this means for managing risk. On the one hand, how do we apply reason to temper the strong emotions engendered by some risk events? On the other hand, how do we infuse needed "doses of feeling" into circumstances where lack of experience may otherwise leave us too "coldly rational"? This article addresses these important questions.
Rationality, risk analysis, risk perception, the affect heuristic
Abstract: The cultural cognition hypothesis holds that individuals are disposed to form risk perceptions that reflect and reinforce their commitments to contested views of the good society. This paper reports the results of a study that used the controversy over mandatory HPV vaccination to test the cultural cognition hypothesis. Although public health officials have recommended that all girls aged 11 or 12 be vaccinated for HPV - a virus that causes cervical cancer and that is transmitted by sexual contact - political controversy has blocked adoption of mandatory school-enrollment vaccination programs in all but one state. A multi-stage experimental study of a large and diverse sample of American adults (N = 1,500) found evidence that cultural cognition generates disagreement about the risks and benefits of the HPV vaccine. It does so, the experiment determined, through two mechanisms: biased assimilation, and the credibility heuristic. In addition to describing the study, the paper discusses the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
Abstract: The phenomenon of cultural cognition refers to the disposition of individuals to adopt factual beliefs about risk that express their cultural evaluations of putatively dangerous activities. In a previous review essay (119 Harv. L. Rev. 1071 (2006)), we suggested that this phenomenon makes it inappropriate to treat public risk perceptions that differ from those of expert regulators as simple mistakes, which should be denied weight in lawmaking, as opposed to values, which presumably should guide regulatory policy in a democratic society. Cass Sunstein wrote a critical response (119 Harv. L. Rev. 1110 (2006)). Sunstein's basic thesis is that cultural cognition is largely a result of bounded rationality, not an alternative to it, and as such generates beliefs no more entitled to normative respect than those associated with other types of cognitive biases. We offer a (brief) reply, distinguishing the question of whether cultural cognition can be explained by biases and heuristics attributable to bounded rationality (we say, no) from the question of whether beliefs founded on cultural cognition should be normative for law (we say, sometimes).
ultural cognition, risk perception
Abstract: This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to test competing conjectures about the evolution of public attitudes toward nanotechnology. The rational enlightenment hypothesis holds that members of the public will become favorably disposed to nanotechnology as balanced and accurate information about it disseminates. The cultural cognition hypothesis, in contrast, holds that members of the public are likely to polarize along cultural lines when exposed to such information. Using a between-subjects design (N = 1,862), the experiment compared the perceptions of subjects exposed to balanced information on the risks and benefits of nanotechnology to the perceptions of subjects exposed to no information. The results strongly confirmed the cultural polarization hypothesis and furnished no support for the rational enlightenment hypothesis. Data obtained in the experiment also suggested that the observed correlation in the general public between familiarity with nanotechnology and a positive view of it is spurious: familiarity does not cause a favorable view; rather other influences, including individualistic cultural values, incline certain individuals both to form a positive view and to learn about nanotechnology. The paper also discusses the implications of these findings for promoting informed public understandings of nanotechnology.
nanotechnology, cultural cognition, risk perception
Abstract: We present the results from the second in a series of ongoing experimental studies of public perceptions of nanotechnology risks. Like the first study, the current one found that members of the public, most of whom know little or nothing about nanotechnology, polarize along cultural lines when exposed to information about it. Extending previous results, the current study also found that cultural polarization of this sort interacts with the perceived cultural identities of policy advocates. Polarization along expected lines grew even more extreme when subjects of diverse cultural outlooks observed an advocate whose values they share advancing an argument they were predisposed to accept, and an advocate whose values they reject advancing an argument they were predisposed to resist. But when those same advocates were assigned the opposite positions, subjects formed perceptions of nanotechnology risks diametrically opposed to the ones normally associated with their own cultural predispositions. Finally, when there was no consistent relationship between the perceived values of advocates and positions taken on nanotechnology risk and benefits, cultural polarization was neutralized. The significance of these findings for promotion of informed public understanding of nanotechnology is discussed.
nanotechnology, cultural cognition, risk perception, cultural credibility heuristic, polarization, biased assimilation
Abstract: We conducted an experimental public opinion study of the effect of balanced information on nanotechnology risk-benefit perceptions. The study found that subjects did not react in a uniform, much less a uniformly positive manner, but rather polarized along lines consistent with cultural predispositions toward technological risk generally.
cultural cognition, nanotechnology, risk perception, biased assimilation, polarization
Abstract: Measuring reaction times to number comparisons is thought to reveal a processing stage in elementary numerical cognition linked to internal, imprecise representations of number magnitudes. These intuitive representations of the mental number line have been demonstrated across species and human development but have been little explored in decision making. This paper develops and tests hypotheses about the influence of such evolutionarily ancient, intuitive numbers on human decisions. We demonstrate that individuals with more precise mental-number-line representations are higher in numeracy (number skills) consistent with previous research with children. Individuals with more precise representations (compared to those with less precise representations) also were more likely to choose larger, later amounts over smaller, immediate amounts, particularly with a larger proportional difference between the two monetary outcomes. In addition, they were more likely to choose an option with a larger proportional but smaller absolute difference compared to those with less precise representations. These results are consistent with intuitive number representations underlying: a) perceived differences between numbers, b) the extent to which proportional differences are weighed in decisions, and, ultimately, c) the valuation of decision options. Human decision processes involving numbers important to health and financial matters may be rooted in elementary, biological processes shared with other species.
decision making, numerical cognition, numeracy, proportional reasoning, individual differences
Abstract: Numerous studies have demonstrated that theoretically equivalent measures of preference, such as choices and prices, can lead to systematically different preference orderings, known as preference reversals. Two major causes of preference reversals are the compatibility effect and the prominence effect. The present studies demonstrate that the combined effects of prominence and compatibility lead to predictable preference reversals in settings where improvements in air quality are compared with improvements in consumer commodities by two methods - willingness to pay for each improvement and choice (For which of the two improvements would you pay more? Which improvement is more valuable to you?). Willingness to pay leads to relatively greater preference for improved commodities; choice leads to relatively greater preference for improved air quality. These results extend the domain of preference reversals and pose a challenge to traditional theories of preference. At the applied level, these findings indicate the need to develop new methods for valuing environmental resources.
behavioral economics, preference reversals, decision making, context effects, environmental values, compatibility, willingness to pay
Abstract: Since February 2003, hundreds of thousands of people in the Darfur region of western Sudan have been murdered by government-supported local militias, and millions forced to flee their burnt-out villages for the dubious safety of refugee camps. It is genocide by any definition, yet the world looks away.
genocide
Abstract: Humans perceive and act on risk in two fundamental ways. Risk as feelings refers to individuals' instinctive and intuitive reactions to danger. Risk as analysis brings logic, reason, and scientific deliberation to bear on risk management. Reliance on risk as feelings is described as "the affect heuristic." This article traces the development of this heuristic and discusses some of the important ways that it impacts how people perceive and evaluate risk.
risk perception, risk analysis, the affect heuristic
Abstract: “If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at one, I will.” This statement, uttered by Mother Teresa, captures a powerful and deeply unsettling insight into human nature: Most people are caring and will exert great effort to rescue “the one” whose needy plight comes to their attention. But these same people often become numbly indifferent to the plight of “the one” who is part of a much greater problem. Why does this occur? The answer to this question will help us answer a related question: Why do good people and their governments ignore mass murder and genocide?
Genocide, affect, psychophysical model, numeracy, compassion, moral intuition, interntional law
Abstract: A non-extensional theory of preference, called Sign Theory, is proposed and tested. Sign Theory considers preference construction as an evidence-building process, in which local valuation of evidence combines additively to form a global judgment. At the heart of this treatment is the notion that local evaluation generates positive or negative valuation outcomes (signs). Thus, signs are building blocks for preference construction. Study 1 confirmed the notion that valuation processes are based on signs derived from reference points. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated the robustness and importance of the sign-frequency effect, which shows that the attractiveness of an option is positively related to the number of the positive signs, but negatively related to the number of negative signs. Studies 4 and 5 were designed to reduce the sign-frequency effect. Study 4 provided information about attribute weights to help participants appreciate the part-whole relationship between partitioned attributes and summarized attributes. In Study 5, decision makers were clearly informed about the two display formats of the same information. Nevertheless, in both studies, the presence of sign-frequency effects remained evident.
Sign Theory, reference point effects, sign-frequency effects, preference construction
Abstract: There is a growing respect for the wisdom of emotion and intuition that has emerged from recent research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. This paper reviews a segment of this research dealing with intuitive feelings, which my colleagues and I call affect. The processing of affect by the human brain is indeed sophisticated, contributing greatly to rationality. Nevertheless, our intuitions can sometimes lead us astray. Better understanding of affective intuition is necessary to enable us to maximize the benefits and minimize the errors of this remarkable system.
Affect, law
Abstract: “Baby boomers” comprise a significant portion of the U.S. population, and the leading-edge of this group will begin retirement within a decade. These individuals, in the age range of 45 to 55 years, are currently at or near the peak of their income-earning ability and are in a stage of life where retirement planning to meet future income needs is essential. This report presents the results of a national-level survey of leading-edge baby boomers and how they plan to meet their financial needs in retirement. Using a list-sample technique, 396 individuals in the age range 45 to 55 years were interviewed by telephone about their plans for retirement, the sources of wealth they have accumulated, the sources of income that they expect in retirement, and their perceptions about the future of the economy and financial markets. Health care costs appear to dominate people’s concerns and are the most important use to which they plan to put their accumulated wealth. Most individuals in this group expect to receive retirement income from multiple sources, including Social Security, employer pensions, work in retirement, and long-term investments in financial markets. The majority of individuals surveyed indicated that they have a personal portfolio of marketed securities. However, portfolio holders have much higher expectations of market performance and portfolio return than do professional financial advisors, in some cases twice as much on a ten-year average annualized basis. This optimism appears to be the result of several factors, including a buoyed sentiment about the long-term prospects for the domestic economy based on recent market performance, and a tendency toward establishing multiple income sources for retirement as a strategy for managing an uncertain future.
Abstract: People don't ignore mass killings because they lack compassion. Psychological research suggests it's grim statistics themselves that paralyze us into inaction.
Darfur, genocide, psychic numbing, mass murder, affect, compassion
Abstract: Perhaps the earliest studies of risk perception with regard to natural hazards were conducted by geographer Gilbert White (1945, 1964) and his students (e.g. Burton and Kates 1964). Later, in 1974, this author joined with White and economist Howard Kunreuther to review this early work in the context of new research in cognitive psychology (Kahneman and Tversky 1972; Tversky and Kahneman 1971, 1973) describing the idiosyncratic ways human minds think about probability, uncertainty and risk (Slovic et al. 1974). This research illustrated the workings of Herbert Simon’s theory of “bounded rationality” (1959), which asserts that human cognitive limitations force decision makers to construct a simplified model of the world in order to deal with it.
bounded rationality, risk perception, natural hazards, cognitive psychology, probability, risk
Abstract: Most people are caring and will exert great effort to rescue individual victims whose needy plight comes to their attention. These same good people, however, often become numbly indifferent to the plight of individuals who are "one of many" in a much greater problem. Why does this occur? The answer to this question will help us answer a related question that is the topic of this paper: Why, over the past century, have good people repeatedly ignored mass murder and genocide? Every episode of mass murder is unique and raises unique obstacles to intervention. But the repetitiveness of such atrocities, ignored by powerful people and nations, and by the general public, calls for explanations that may reflect some fundamental deficiency in our humanity - a deficiency that, once identified, might possibly be overcome.
One fundamental mechanism that may play a role in many, if not all, episodes of mass-murder neglect involves the capacity to experience affect, the positive and negative feelings that combine with reasoned analysis to guide our judgments, decisions, and actions. I shall draw from psychological research to show how the statistics of mass murder or genocide, no matter how large the numbers, fail to convey the true meaning of such atrocities. The reported numbers of deaths represent dry statistics, "human beings with the tears dried off," that fail to spark emotion or feeling and thus fail to motivate action. Recognizing that we cannot rely only upon our moral feelings to motivate proper action against genocide, we must look to moral argument and international law. The 1948 Genocide Convention was supposed to meet this need, but it has not been effective. It is time to examine this failure in light of the psychological deficiencies described here and design legal and institutional mechanisms that will enforce proper response to genocide and other forms of mass murder.
genocide, psychic numbing, dual process theories, affect, compassion
Abstract: Most people are caring and will exert great effort to reserve "the one" whose needy plight comes to their attention. But these same people often become numbly indifferent to the plight of "the one" who is one of many in a much greater problem.
Abstract: Risk is perceived and acted on in 2 fundamental ways. Risk as feelings refers to individuals' fast, instinctive, and intuitive reactions to danger. Risk as analysis brings logic, reason, and scientific deliberation to bear on risk management. Reliance on risk as feelings is described with "the affect heuristic." The authors trace the development of this heuristic across a variety of research paths. The authors also discuss some of the important practical implications resulting from ways that this heuristic impacts how people perceive and evaluate risk, and, more generally, how it influences all human decision making. Finally, some important implications of the affect heuristic for communication and decision making pertaining to cancer prevention and treatment are briefly discussed.
risk perception, risk analysis, affect heuristic, heuristics, rationality
Abstract: A defining element of catastrophes is the magnitude of their harmful consequences. To help society prevent or mitigate damage from catastrophes, immense effort and technological sophistication are often employed to assess and communicate the size and scope of potential or actual losses. This effort assumes that people can understand the resulting numbers and act on them appropriately.
However, recent behavioral research casts doubt on this fundamental assumption. Many people do not understand large numbers. Indeed, large numbers have been found to lack meaning and to be underweighted in decisions unless they convey affect (feeling). As a result, there is a paradox that rational models of decision making fail to represent. On the one hand, we respond strongly to aid a single individual in need. On the other hand, we often fail to prevent mass tragedies such as genocide or take appropriate measures to reduce potential losses from natural disasters. This might seem irrational but I think this occurs, in part, because as numbers get larger and larger, we become insensitive; numbers fail to trigger the emotion or feeling necessary to motivate action.
I shall address this problem of insensitivity to mass tragedy by identifying certain circumstances in which it compromises the rationality of our actions and by pointing briefly to strategies that might lessen or overcome this problem.
Affect, Darfur, genocide, psychophysical model, collapse of compassion, moral intuition, numeracy
Abstract: Three experiments demonstrate how the processing of negations is contingent on the evaluation context in which the negative information is presented. In addition, the strategy used to process the negations induced different affective reactions toward the stimuli, leading to inconsistency of preference. Participants were presented with stimuli described by either stating the presence of positive features (explicitly positive alternative) or negating the presence of negative features (non-negative alternative). Alternatives were presented for either joint (JE) or separate evaluation (SE). Experiment 1 showed that the non-negative stimuli were judged less attractive than the positive ones in JE but not in SE. Experiment 2 revealed that the non-negative stimuli induced a less clear and less positive feeling when they were paired with explicitly positive stimuli rather than evaluated separately. Non-negative options were also found less easy to judge than the positive ones in JE but not in SE. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that people process negations using two different models depending on the evaluation mode. Through a memory task, we found that in JE people process the non-negative attributes as negations of negative features, whereas in SE they directly process the non-negative attributes as positive features.
processing of negations, evaluation mode, affect, preference, joint vs. separate
Abstract: A fundamental principle of psychophysics is that people's ability to discriminate change in a physical stimulus diminishes as the magnitude of the stimulus increases. We find that people also exhibit diminished sensitivity in valuing lifesaving interventions against a background of increasing numbers of lives at risk. We call this "psychophysical numbing." Studies 1 and 2 found that an intervention saving a fixed number of lives was judged significantly more beneficial when fewer lives were at risk overall. Study 3 found that respondents wanted the minimum number of lives a medical treatment would have to save to merit a fixed amount of funding to be much greater for a disease with a larger number of potential victims than for a disease with a smaller number. The need to better understand the dynamics of psychophysical numbing and to determine its effects on decision making is discussed.
Abstract: Imagine a primer on risk and its management written for both risk specialists and the general public. It is impossible to address both audiences with the same material, you might think. Well, Kimberly Thompson has done it with Risk in Perspective: Insight and Humor in the Age of Risk Management.
risk management, risk communication
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