Previous studies of risk perception have typically focused on the mean judgments of a group of people regarding the riskiness (or safety) of a diverse set of hazardous activities, substances, and technologies. This paper reports the results of two studies that take a different path. Study 1 investigated whether models within a single technological domain were similar to previous models based on group means and diverse hazards. Study 2 created a group taxonomy of perceived risk for only one technological domain, railroads, and examined whether the structure of that taxonomy corresponded with taxonomies derived from prior studies of diverse hazards. Results from Study 1 indicated that the importance of various risk characteristics in determining perceived risk differed across individuals and across hazards, but not so much as to invalidate the results of earlier studies based on group means and diverse hazards. In Study 2, the detailed analysis of railroad hazards produced a structure that had both important similarities to, and dissimilarities from, the structure obtained in prior research with diverse hazard domains. The data also indicated that railroad hazards are really quite diverse, with some approaching nuclear reactors in their perceived seriousness. These results suggest that information about the diversity of perceptions within a single domain of hazards could provide valuable input to risk‐management decisions.
TWENTY-FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE HEALTH PHYSICS SOCIETY: Abstracts of papers presented at the meeting: PDF Only
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A comprehensive approach to managing risk must draw on both the descriptive insights of the behavioral sciences and the prescriptive clarity of the management sciences. On the descriptive side, this study develops structural models to explain how the impact upon society of an accident or other unfortunate event is influenced by the physical consequences of the event, perceived risk, media coverage, and public response. Our findings indicate that the media and public response play crucial roles in determining the impact of an unfortunate event. Public response appears to be determined by perceptions that the event was caused by managerial incompetence and is a signal of future risk. On the prescriptive side, we briefly discuss how these findings based upon structural models can be incorporated into a decision‐analytic procedure known as an influence diagram.
Abstract : Subjects in four experiments were asked to choose between pairs of alternatives which they had previously equated in value. Within each pair, one alternative was superior on an important dimension but so inferior on a lesser dimension that this disadvantage cancelled its advantage. The majority of subjects resolved these choices by consistently selecting the alternative that was superior on the more important dimension. This result supports the contention that choices are determined by mechanisms that are easy to explain and justify to oneself and to others. Some practical implications of this contention are discussed.
In order to improve hazard management, a risk assessment industry has developed which combines the efforts of physical, biological, and social scientists in an attempt to identify hazards and measure the frequency and magnitude of their consequences. When lay people are asked to evaluate risks, they seldom have statistical evidence on hand. One heuristic that has special relevance for risk perception is known as "availability". In order to be of assistance in the hazard management process, a theory of perceived risk must explain people's extreme aversion to some hazards, their indifference to others, and the discrepancies between these reactions and experts' recommendations. Disagreements about risk should not be expected to evaporate in the presence of "evidence." Definitive evidence, particularly about rare hazards, is difficult to obtain. The very discussion of any low-probability hazard may increase the judged probability of that hazard regardless of what the evidence indicates.
The paper by Metz challenges the view that stigma associated with a nuclear waste repository might lead to significant economic losses to the host region. We have been invited to comment on the general issues raised by this paper. We find that much of the evidence presented in the paper consists of factual and conceptual errors and misrepresentations of the research literature. Based on our review of evidence documenting the social and economic impacts of perceived risk, we conclude that stigma is an important phenomenon that is symptomatic of fundamental problems with the way in which nuclear waste facilities are sited.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past two decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed-not merely revealed-in the process of elicitation.This conception is derived in part from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation often give rise to systematically different responses.These "preference reversals" violate the principle of procedure invariance fundamental to theories of rational choice and raise difficult questions about the nature of human values.If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist?Describing and explaining such failures of invariance will require choice models of far greater complexity than the traditional models.
One of the main ideas that has emerged from behavioral decision research is a constructive conception of judgment and choice. According to this view, preferences and beliefs are actually constructed – not merely revealed – in the elicitation process. This conception is entailed by findings that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation often give rise to systematically different responses (e.g., Slovic, Fischhoff, & Lichtenstein, 1982; Tversky, Sattath, & Slovic, 1988). To account for these data within a constructive framework, we seek explanatory principles that relate the characteristics of the task to the attributes of the objects under study. One such notion is the compatibility hypothesis, which states that the weight of a stimulus attribute is enhanced by its compatibility with the response.
The disparity between the number of patients awaiting organ transplantation and organ availability increases each year. One of the chief obstacles to organ donation is religiosity. We examine the role of religiosity and other related beliefs in organ-donation decisions among Christians (studies 1 and 3) and Jews (study 2). In all samples, we found a significant interaction between religiosity and the salience of a religious context, manipulated by the order of the questions, such that religiosity (and specifically, extrinsic religion) was significantly associated with lower support for organ donations—but only when religious attitudes were elicited first, not when support for organ donation, or questions about other beliefs (study 3) appeared first. We examine possible mechanisms underlying this effect and discuss theoretical and practical implications of this finding to increase support for organ donations in both personal and policy decisions.
How should the affective component of attitudes be conceptualised and measured? Three studies compared measures based on different conceptualisations. Affective attitudes can be: (1) holistic reactions to objects or responses derived from spontaneous images of the objects; (2) bipolar or unipolar in structure; and finally (3) discrete emotional evaluations (e.g., angry, happy) or more general valenced evaluations (e.g., good, bad). It is recommended that further research with self-reports of the affective component include the holistic, unipolar, discrete emotion (HUE) evaluative measures developed in this paper in combination with a holistic bipolar valenced evaluation measure. Our results also supported a hypothesised affective asynchrony effect. Specifically, an affective measure that required more deliberative thought reduced the correspondence between the affective component and intended behaviours/attitudes. Implications for how the affective component may be represented in memory and the impact of that representation on constructed attitudes are discussed briefly.
