The problem of understanding risk and improving risk communication is approached by analogy to thermodynamics. We first emphasize the distinction between risk as probability, analogous to an intensive variable such as temperature, and risk as the flow of adverse...
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The reliance on feelings when judging risks and benefits is one of the most fundamental valuation processes in risk perception. Although previous research suggests that the affect heuristic reliably predicts an inverse correlation between risk and benefit judgments, it has not yet been tested if the affect heuristic is sensitive to elicitation method effects (joint/separate evaluation) and to what extent individual differences in cognitive abilities may mediate the risk-benefit correlation. Across two studies we find that (1) the risk-benefit correlation is stable across different elicitation methods and for different domains (e.g., social domain, sensation-seeking domain, health domain, economic domain) and (2) the strength of the inverse correlation is tied to individual cognitive abilities-primarily cognitive reflection ability.
Chapter 1. The Arithmetic of Compassion and the Future of Risk Management was published in The Future of Risk Management on page 13.
Considerable amount of laboratory and survey‐based research finds that people show disproportional compassionate and affective response to the scope of human mortality risk. According to research on “psychic numbing,” it is often the case that the more who die, the less we care. In the present article, we examine the extent of this phenomenon in verbal behavior, using large corpora of natural language to quantify the affective reactions to loss of life. We analyze valence, arousal, and specific emotional content of over 100,000 mentions of death in news articles and social media posts, and find that language shows an increase in valence (i.e., decreased negative affect) and a decrease in arousal when describing mortality of larger numbers of people. These patterns are most clearly reflected in specific emotions of joy and (in a reverse fashion) of fear and anger. Our results showcase a novel methodology for studying affective decision making, and highlight the robustness and real‐world relevance of psychic numbing. They also offer new insights regarding the psychological underpinnings of psychic numbing, as well as possible interventions for reducing psychic numbing and overcoming social and psychological barriers to action in the face of the world's most serious threats.
No abstract is provided for this article.
1 When faced with complex, unfamiliar issues, people may have poorly formulated, even incoherent, values. In such situations, where people do not know what they want, the values they express may be highly labile. Subtle changes in how issues are posed, questions are phrased, and responses are elicited can have marked effects on people's expressed preferences. Furthermore, confronting these effects is unavoidable if we are to elicit values at all. If one is interested in what an individual really feels about a value issue, there may be no substitute for an interactive elicitation procedure which acknowledges the elicitor's role in helping the repondent to create and enunciate values. There is, however, no guarantee that even the greatest of care will resolve fundamental inconsistencies in values.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Studies of risk perception examine the opinions people express when they are asked, in various ways, to characterize and evaluate hazardous activities and technologies. This research aims to aid risk analysis and societal decision making by (i) improving methods for eliciting opinions about risk, (ii) providing a basis for understanding and anticipating public responses to hazards, and (iii) improving the communication of risk information among laypeople, technical experts, and policy makers.
Prior research focusing on risk perceptions has led to the observation that well-educated and politically conservative white males tend to systematically perceive lower levels of risk from a wide range of hazards when compared to other members of society (e.g., white women, nonwhite women and men). While this "white male effect (WME)" is quite striking given that many policymakers fall into this group, a byproduct of this finding is that it deflects attention from the heterogeneity, in terms of people's concerns about risks, that exists in African-American and other minority communities. The research reported here set out to explore this heterogeneity by asking a simple question: Can a phenomenon similar to the WME be found in the African-American community? It can, and its implications for research and practice in risk management are discussed.
Thirty-two college students rated the “risk” inherent in playing each of 27 gambles. The results indicated that perceived risk was determined p
Numerous studies have demonstrated that theoretically equivalent measures of preference, such as choices and prices, can lead to systematically different p
Subjective judgments, whether by experts or lay people, are a major component in any risk assessment. If such judgments are faulty, efforts at public and environmental protection are likely to be misdirected. The present paper begins with an analysis of biases...
Subjects were asked to estimate the answers to 16 questions concerning uncertain quantities like, How many people are employed by hospitals in the U.S.? under five different aiding conditions. The most-aided group (Full Algorithm) was given a complete algorithm and asked to make estimates for the parts of the algorithm and to combine the parts as indicated to arrive at an estimate of the desired quantity. The second group (Partial Algorithm) was given the same algorithm without indications of how to combine the parts. After making estimates of the parts, these subjects then estimated the desired quantity. The third group (List & Estimate) was asked to list components or factors they thought were relevant, make an estimate of each item on their list, and then estimate the desired quantity. The fourth group (List) was asked to make such a list, but they were not asked to make estimates of each item before making an estimate of the desired quantity. The fifth group received no aid. The results generally showed improved performance in terms of both accuracy and consistency across subjects with increasing structure of the aid. Generalization of these results to practical estimation situations is possible but limited by the need, in real situations, for the estimator to develop the algorithm, a task that was done here by the experimenters.
