730 publications from this institution
Empathic responses, such as sympathy towards others, are a key ingredient in the decision to provide help to those in need. The determinants of empathic responses are usually thought to be the vividness, similarity, and proximity of the victim. However, recent research highlights the role that attention plays in the generation of feelings. We expanded on this idea by investigating whether sympathy depends on cognitive mechanisms such as attention. In two studies we found that sympathy responses were lower and reaction times were longer when targets were presented with distractors. In addition, online sympathy judgments that allow attentional focusing on a target lead to greater affective responses than judgments made from memory. We conclude that attention is an ingredient in the generation of sympathy, and discuss implications for research on prosocial behaviour and the interaction between attention and emotions.
Dehumanization is a topic of significant interest for academia and society at large. Empirical studies often have people rate the evolved nature of outgroups and prior work suggests immigrants are common victims of less-than-human treatment. Despite existing work that suggests who dehumanizes particular outgroups and who is often dehumanized, the extant literature knows less about why people dehumanize outgroups such as immigrants. The current work takes up this opportunity by examining why people dehumanize immigrants said to be illegal and how measurement format affects dehumanization ratings. Participants ( N = 672) dehumanized such immigrants more if their ratings were made on a slider versus clicking images of hominids, an effect most pronounced for Republicans. Dehumanization was negatively associated with warmth toward illegal immigrants and the perceived unhappiness felt by illegal immigrants from U.S. immigration policies. Finally, most dehumanization is not entirely blatant but instead, captured by virtuous violence and affect as well, suggesting the many ways that dehumanization can manifest as predicted by theory. This work offers a mechanistic account for why people dehumanize immigrants and addresses how survey measurement artifacts (e.g., clicking on images of hominids vs. using a slider) affect dehumanization rates. We discuss how these data extend dehumanization theory and inform empirical research.
We tested assumptions about emotional and behavioral effects of persuasive photography, exploring to what extent photographic attributes regarding expression, gaze, and the number of subjects in images influence sympathy. In addition, we examined whether sympathetic responses were associated with impure altruism, moral disengagement, and willingness to donate money to charitable organizations. We found that sympathetic responses were associated with sad imagery, moral disengagement (negative), feelings of altruism, and willingness to donate. We also found the emotions evoked by exposure to the sad expression of the child converged with negative affect after viewing the photos. However, participants who were exposed to the happy visage did not appear to generate significantly greater feelings of happiness when compared with feelings of sadness.
Studies of the general public have shown that women express far greater concern than men about many health and environmental hazards. A variety of explanations have been offered, including differentials in scientific knowledge or general concerns about technology. The purpose of this study is to analyze differences in the ways that men and women scientists perceive nuclear risk. This article examines the risk attitudes and perceptions of a large mail survey sample of men and women scientists. The sample consists of randomly selected members of the biological and physical science sections of the American Association for the Advancement of Science who reside in Colorado and New Mexico. Men scientists tend to see substantially less risk from nuclear technologies than do women scientists, but this difference is not a manifestation of different levels of scientific training or attitudes toward nature, technology, and normative aspects of risk. Gender differences and field of research have an additive effect on risk perceptions, with women scientists and life scientists perceiving greater risks
Motorists' reluctance to wear seat belts is examined in light of research showing (a) that protective behavior is influenced more by the probability of a hazard than by the magnitude of its consequences and (b) that people are not inclined to protect themselves voluntarily against very low probability threats. It is argued that the probability of death or injury on any single auto trip may be too low to incite a motorist's concern. Maintenance of a “single trip” perspective makes it unlikely that seat belts will be used. Change of perspective, towards consideration of the risks faced during a lifetime of driving, may increase the perceived probabilities of injury and death and, therefore, induce more people to wear seat belts.
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This study investigates the potential impacts of the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, upon tourism, retirement and job‐related migration, and business development in Las Vegas and the state. Adverse impacts may be expected to result from perceptions of risk, stigmatization, and socially amplified reactions to “unfortunate events” associated with the repository (major and minor accidents, discoveries of radiation releases, evidence of mismanagement, attempts to sabotage or disrupt the facility, etc.). The conceptual underpinnings of risk perception, stigmatization, and social amplification are discussed and empirical data are presented to demonstrate how nuclear images associated with Las Vegas and the State of Nevada might trigger adverse economic effects. The possibility that intense negative imagery associated with the repository may cause significant harm to Nevada's economy can no longer be ignored by serious attempts to assess the risks and impacts of this unique facility. The behavioral processes described here appear relevant as well to the social impact assessment of any proposed facility that produces, uses, transports, or disposes of hazardous materials.
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).
Studies of behavior in the face of natural disasters and mass atrocities provide common lessons about managing catastrophic threats. We cannot assume that the massive destructiveness of an event will lead us to appreciate and appropriately respond to the risk. The potential consequences, whether in billions of dollars or millions of endangered lives, often fail to convey the emotional meaning necessary to motivate effective protective actions. Rather than trusting our desensitized feelings as our moral compass, we must employ slow and careful thinking, coupled with short-term incentives, to create policies, procedures, laws, and institutions that will nudge or even require us to behave in ways that accord with our considered values for protecting human lives and property.
The singularity effect of identifiable victims refers to people's greater willingness to help a single concrete victim compared with a group of victims experiencing the same need. We present 3 studies exploring values and cultural sources of this effect. In the first study, the singularity effect was found only among Western Israelis and not among Bedouin participants (a more collectivist group). In Study 2, individuals with higher collectivist values were more likely to contribute to a group of victims. Finally, the third study demonstrates a more causal relationship between collectivist values and the singularity effect by showing that enhancing people's collectivist values using a priming manipulation produces similar donations to single victims and groups. Moreover, participants' collectivist preferences mediated the interaction between the priming conditions and singularity of the recipient. Implications for several areas of psychology and ways to enhance caring for groups in need are discussed.
In two studies, questionnaires originally developed to study risk perception in the United States were administered to Norwegian students. Level of perceived risk in Norway was clearly below American scores for most hazards, but slightly above what has been found in a parallel Hungarian study. Norwegians were more concerned than both Hungarians and Americans about narcotics, but less than Americans about chemicals used in food and agriculture, and less than Hungarians about a number of common, everyday hazards. When ratings on nine risk characteristics were factor analyzed, a two dimensional solution was found with Fatal risk and Involuntary risk as the two most important dimensions. Ratings of general death risk, harm risk, and death risk for those exposed were highly correlated, but appeared to be unrelated to the number of people believed to be exposed to the hazard.
