730 publications from this institution
How often are people wrong when they are certain that they know the answer to a question ? The studies reported here suggest that the answer is too often. For a variety of general-knowledge questions (e.g., absinthe is [a] a liqueur or [b] a precious stone), subjects first chose the most likely answer and then indicated their degree of certainty that the answer they had selected was, in fact, correct. Across several different question and response formats, subjects were consistently overconfident. They had sufficient faith in their confidence judgments to be willing to stake money on their validity. The psychological bases for unwarranted certainty are discussed in terms of the inferential processes whereby knowledge is constructed from perceptions and memories.
A traditional goal of science and environmental communication, including climate communication, has been to encourage disinterested or uninformed audiences to pay more attention to the world around them and to shift disinterest and apathy toward positive engagement with nature and proenvironment lifestyles. We conducted an empirical investigation of audience responses to key aspects of the world scientists' "2024 State of the Climate Report: Perilous Times on Planet Earth," focusing on whether the language of this article manages to sway readers to rethink their attitudes toward climate change. Across many variations, the textual prompts we gave to readers did <i>not</i> overwhelmingly move the needle of public attitudes regarding climate change, suggesting that political affiliation and ideologies may be a much stronger indicator of public actions and attitudes than exposure to scientific information. Regarding climate change, we seem to be living in a time of information saturation and ideological entrenchment.
Discover Choices, Values, and Frames, 1st Edition, Daniel Kahneman on Higher Education from Cambridge
Background Although there is evidence that consumers want comparative quality information, most studies indicate that consumers make limited use of the data in decision making. The reasons for the limited use appear to be the complexity of the information and the difficulty of processing and using the amount of information in reports. The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether there are approaches to reporting comparative information that make it easier for consumers to comprehend the information. Further, the degree to which consumers who have a low level of skill can accurately use that information when it is presented in a format that is easier to use was examined. Methods The study used an experimental design to examine how different presentation approaches affect the use of information. Participants were randomly assigned to different conditions and were asked to review information and complete a decision task related to using comparative information and making health plan selections. Two separate convenience samples were used in the study: an elderly Medicare sample (N = 253), and a nonelderly sample (N = 239). Results The findings indicate that there are data presentation approaches that help consumers who have lower skills use information more accurately. Some of these presentation strategies (for example, relative stars) improve comprehension among the lower skilled, and other strategies (for example, evaluative labels) appear to aid those in the midrange of comprehension skill. Conclusions Using these approaches in reporting would likely increase the use of the comparative information and increase the efficacy of reporting efforts.
The management of and communication about risks has become a major question of public policy and intellectual debate in the modern world. The social amplification of risk framework describes how both social and individual factors act to amplify or dampen perceptions of risk and through this create secondary effects such as stigmatisation of technologies, economic losses or regulatory impacts. This volume, edited by three of the world's leading analysts of risk and its communication, brings together contributions from a group of international experts working in the field of risk perception and risk communication. Key conceptual issues are discussed as well as a range of recent case studies (spanning BSE and food safety, AIDS/HIV, nuclear power, child protection, Y2K, electromagnetic fields, and waste incineration) that take forward the state-of-the-art in risk amplification theory. The volume also draws attention to lessons for public policy, risk management and risk communication practice.
Werturteile, die ein Anzeichen für die Erwünschtheit möglicher Entscheidungsergebnisse sind, bilden den Kern jedes Risk Assessment. Verfechter der Risikoforschung befürworten im allgemeinen eine Arbeitsteilung zwischen technischen...
How do nations decide whether to intervene militarily to prevent or stop genocide? How do military and intelligence officers determine the severity of physical or psychological harm to inflict on terrorism suspects? Should a nation escalate troop deployments during an armed conflict that is assessed to be unwinnable? Public officials confronting policy challenges like these must decide among many interests related to transnational security, morality, politics, and the rule of law. Historical evidence and findings from decision research suggest that officials will often decide in favor of security, even when that choice contradicts stated values and otherwise leads to suboptimal welfare outcomes. This Article explores opportunities for lawyers advising the U.S. president and other national security officials to change those outcomes. The prominence effect describes challenges in making quantitative tradeoffs among competing attributes and the likelihood that individuals will decide in favor of the more inherently important, defensible – i.e., prominent – attribute. This Article presents prominence as an impediment to faithful application of transnational humanitarian law because security considerations are more defensible than humanitarian considerations for decision makers and their advisors. Part I describes the research behind prominence and instances when it has been observed or hypothesized in global crises. Part II provides an overview of the national security attorney’s roles in a variety of U.S. national security settings.Part III proposes ways for those attorneys to help policy makers overcome prominence. Part IV discusses other opportunities to mitigate prominence in strategic decision-making processes.
The approach to the study of judgment that this book represents had origins in three lines of research that developed in the 1950s and 1960s: the comparison of clinical and statistical prediction, initiated by Paul Meehl; the study of subjective probability in the Bayesian paradigm, introduced to psychology by Ward Edwards; and the investigation of heuristics and strategies of reasoning, for which Herbert Simon offered a program and Jerome Bruner an example. Our collection also represents the recent convergence of the study of judgment with another strand of psychological research: the study of causal attribution and lay psychological interpretation, pioneered by Fritz Heider.
The federal government's attempts to site a permanent high-level radioactive waste repository have been frustrating and so far unsuccessful. Many of the problems were recognized more than a decade ago. In 1982, the US Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and established a program to site and develop an underground repository. By 1987, this program was widely considered to be a failure. It was plagued by public opposition, intergovernmental conflict, poor management, scientific questions and concerns, and substantial cost overruns. In December 1987 Congress amended the act and selected Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the only location to be studied as a potential repository. This halted further work on other potential sites in the western US, the eastern US sites for a second repository, and the monitored retrievable system facility that the US Department of Energy (DOE) wanted to locate in Tennessee. These amendments did not address the basic causes for the fail ures between 1983 and 1987. As a result, although the program was greatly simplified with only one site, it was beset by the same problems that created the original collapse. Now there are new and widespread calls for a congressional review and restructuring of the program from federal, state, and local officials, government agencies, industry, and public groups. This article examines the lessons from these two failed attempts and makes recommendations for devising a new policy.
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The National Research Council's 1983 study Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process, known as the "Red Book," sought "institutional mechanisms that best foster a constructive partnership between science and government" for informing contentious public decisions about hazards from exposure to toxic substances. More than a decade later, a new National Research Council committee was formed to reexamine the process of risk characterization, which played a central role in the framework developed in the Red Book. In seeking to understand why risk management often breaks down at the stage of risk characterization, this new committee broadened the charge to improve risk characterization in ways that better inform decision-making and resolution of controversies over risk. This led to a report (Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society) that carefully examined social, behavioral, economic, and ethical aspects of risk that were not made explicit in the Red Book. This paper will describe some of the research that led to a greater recognition of the importance of these "sociopolitical" factors and discuss the implications of these factors for designing an analytic-deliberative process that informs decision-making and improves the ability of interested and affected parties to participate in the decision process. Keywords: risk assessmentRed Bookrisk perceptionEPArisk managementNational Research Councilunderstanding risk.
