Technological hazards are evaluated in terms of quantitatively expressed physical, biological, and social descriptors. For each hazard a profile is constructed that considerably extends the conventional definition of risk. The profile, which is termed hazardousness, was understood in pilot experiments on perception and appeared to capture a large fraction of lay people's concern with hazard. It also suggests an orderly method for establishing priorities for the management of hazards.
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In this chapter, we discuss the psychological aspects of financial decisions related to charitable giving. We argue that affect plays a central role in driving charitable decisions. In our selective review, we explore two psychological phenomena that are based on...
The high levels of public worry and distrust of authorities, especially as associated with nuclear energy and radioactive waste, are well established in the literature and in the experience of risk communicators dealing with the general public. Though much of the experience with the heightened sense of worry that accompanies planned exposure situations associated with proposed radioactive/nuclear facilities (e.g., radioactive waste repositories, nuclear power plants, yet to be approved or built), there are also examples of existing exposure situations such as those following radiological accidents (e.g., Chernobyl or Fukushima). Some risk perception factors (e.g., trust, dread) are common to both planned and existing exposure situations, whereas others (e.g., volition, controllability) may be more prevalent in post‐accident exposure situations. Specific risk perceptions held by a given population and its various subgroups must be acknowledged and incorporated into successful risk communication and public engagement strategies. Post‐accident recovery programs and remediation projects, while in many countries requiring stakeholder and public acceptance to proceed, often fail to incorporate the specific risk perceptions held by the various affected groups in their risk communication and public involvement strategies. Such failures can foster a skeptical or angry public reaction, and hamper recovery in terms of both primary measures (radiological risk reduction interventions) and secondary measures (aiming at “return to normal life,” removal of stigmatization, health and well‐being, etc.). Existing exposure situations and the corresponding mitigations are often approached as local or national scale issues, but by their nature of following radiological emergencies or nuclear accidents, issues of multinational risk perceptions may also arise. Confronting risk perceptions featuring high levels of uncertainty, issue complexity, distrust, information asymmetry, and so forth, requires more interactive forms of governance and adaptive approaches to securing public acceptance. A suggestion is made to deploy an iterative continuous improvement model for incorporating specific risk perceptions into risk communication programs in concert with mutual‐gains‐based public engagement mechanisms.
Paul Slovic,Professor of Psychology, University of Oregon. Video recording of lecture presented on October 27, 2016 at Presidents Hall, Franklin Hall, Indiana University Bloomington.
The word stigma was used by the ancient Greeks to refer to a mark placed on an individual to signify infamy or disgrace. One defining characteristic of a stigma is the risk that the marked person is perceived to pose to society. Within the social sciences, there is an extensive literature on the topic of stigma as it applies to people and social groups. By means of its association with risk, the concept of stigma has recently come to be generalized to technologies, places, and products that are perceived as unduly dangerous.
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Decisions to intervene in a foreign country to prevent genocide and mass atrocities are among the most challenging and controversial choices facing national leaders. Drawing on techniques from decision analysis, psychology, and negotiation analysis, we propose a structured approach to these difficult choices that can provide policy makers with additional insight, consistency, efficiency, and defensibility. We propose the use of a values-based framework to clarify the key elements of these complex choices and to provide a consistent structure for comparison of the likely benefits, risks, and tradeoffs associated with alternative intervention strategies. Results from a workshop involving Ambassadors and experienced policy makers provide a first test of this new method for clarifying intervention choices. A decision-aiding framework is shown to improve the clarity and relevance of intervention deliberations, laying the groundwork for a more comprehensive and clearer understanding of the threats and opportunities associated with various intervention options.
Studies by Sjöberg published in 1999 (Journal of Risk Research), Volume 2, Number 2, pp. 129-49) have led him to conclude that perceived risk is mostly determined by probability of harm, whereas risk reduction demands are mostly determined by severity of harm and not probability. As a result, he finds that perceived risk does not predict demand for mitigation, leading him to question the value of the perceived risk construct. Sjöberg's results conflict with an extensive literature demonstrating (a) that protective behaviours are influenced by both probability and severity of harm and (b) that perceived risk is a strong predictor of desire for risk reduction. Why do Sjöberg's results conflict with this literature? The answer is to be found in the idiosyncrasies of his research designs and interpretations. In Study 1, Sjöberg asked people to judge the risk of adverse and sometimes trivial outcomes, leading his respondents to think of risk as the probability of those outcomes. In Study 2, he asked people to evaluate insurance against relatively probable losses, failing to test the hypothesis that probability thresholds trigger insurance purchases. Sjöberg's conclusions are thus misleading. For the purpose of understanding and predicting people's concerns, their desires for risk reduction, and their protective behaviours, it would be unwise to discard the concept of perceived risk.
A series of experiments studied how people judge the frequency of death from various causes.The judgments exhibited a highly consistent but systematically biased subjective scale of frequency.Two kinds of bias were identified: (a) a tendency to overestimate small frequencies and underestimate larger ones, and (b) a tendency to exaggerate the frequency of some specific causes and to underestimate the frequency of others, at any given level of objective frequency.These biases were traced to a number of possible sources, including disproportionate exposure, memorability, or imaginability of various events.Subjects were unable to correct for these sources of bias when specifically instructed to avoid them.Comparisons with previous laboratory studies are discussed, along with methods for improving frequency judgments and the implications of the present findings for the management of societal hazards.How well can people estimate the fre-how small a difference in frequency can be quencies of the lethal events they may en-reliably detected?Do people have a concounter in life (e.g., accidents, diseases, sistent internal scale of frequency for such homicides, suicides, etc.) ?More specifically, events?What factors, besides actual frequency, influence people's judgments?The answers to these questions may have to society.Citizens must Defense and was monitored by the Office of Naval assess rlsks accurately in order to mobilize Research under Contracts N00014-76-C-0074 and society's resources effectively for reducing N00074-78-C-0100 (ARPA Order Nos.3052 and hazards and treating their victims.Official ,5469) under subcontract to Oregon Research Inreco nition of the irn p 0r t a nce of valid risk stitute and Subcontracts 76-030-0714 and 78-072-b ., ,.,<<.,• ^ » 0722 to Perceptronics, Inc. from Decisions and assessments is found m the vital statistics Designs, Inc. that are carefully tabulated and periodically We would like to thank Nancy Collins and reported to the public (see Figure 1 ).There Peggy Roecker for extraordinary diligence and ; Sj i lowev er, no guarantee that these statispatience in typing and data analysis.We are also .
Choosing a short-form measure of conspiracist ideation (i.e., the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories) is fraught. Despite there being numerous scales to choose from, little work has been done to compare their psychometric properties. To address this shortcoming, we compared the internal consistency, 2-week test–retest reliability, criterion validity, and construct validity of five short-form conspiracist ideation measures: the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale–5 (GCB-5), the Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire (CMQ), the General Measure of Conspiracism (GMC), the American Conspiracy Thinking Scale (ACTS), and the One-Item Conspiracy Measure (1CM). The results of our investigation indicated that all five scales are reliable and valid measures of conspiracist ideation. That said, the GCB-5 tended to perform the best, while the 1CM tended to perform the worst. We conclude our investigation by discussing trade-offs among the five scales, as well as providing recommendations for future research.
