No abstract is provided for this article.
This study is a replication and extension in Canada of a previous study in the United States in which toxicologists and members of the public were surveyed to determine their attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions regarding risks from chemicals. This study of “intuitive vs. scientific toxicology” was motivated by the premise that different assumptions, conceptions, and values underlie much of the discrepancy between expert and lay views of chemical risks. The results showed that Canadian toxicologists had far lower perceptions of risk and more favorable attitudes toward chemicals than did the Canadian public. The public's attitudes were quite negative and showed the same lack of dose‐response sensitivity found in the earlier U.S. study. Both the public and the toxicologists lacked confidence in the value of animal studies for predicting human health risks. However, the public had great confidence in the validity of animal studies that found evidence of carcinogenicity, whereas such evidence was not considered highly predictive of human health risk by many toxicologists. Technical judgments of toxicologists were found to be associated with factors such as affiliation, gender, and worldviews. Implications of these data for risk communication are briefly discussed.
Concern is mounting in Europe and North America about the low proportion of people who say they would accept a blood transfusion. For example, in the event of needing a transfusion, 46% of Europeans assert that they would accept blood from anybody, 25% would only...
Research has demonstrated that two types of affect have an influence on judgment and decision making: incidental affect (affect unrelated to a judgment or decision such as a mood) and integral affect (affect that is part of the perceiver's internal representation of the option or target under consideration). So far, these two lines of research have seldom crossed so that knowledge concerning their combined effects is largely missing. To fill this gap, the present review highlights differences and similarities between integral and incidental affect. Further, common and unique mechanisms that enable these two types of affect to influence judgment and choices are identified. Finally, some basic principles for affect integration when the two sources co-occur are outlined. These principles are discussed in relation to existing work that has focused on incidental or integral affect but not both.
The 20th Century is often said to be the bloodiest century in recorded history. In addition to its wars, the century witnessed many grave and widespread human rights abuses. But what stands out in historical accounts of those abuses, perhaps even more than the cruelty of their perpetration, is the inaction of bystanders. Why do people and their governments repeatedly fail to react to genocide and other mass scale human rights violations?A chapter in Eldar Shafir's edited volume, The Behavioral Foundations of Policy, forthcoming from the Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press. Posted on SSRN in advance of publication with kind permission from Princeton University Press.
When donating to charitable causes, people do not value lives consistently. Money is often concentrated on a single victim even though more people would be helped, if resources were dispersed or spent protecting future victims. We examine the impact of deliberating about donation decisions on generosity. In a series of field experiments, we show that teaching or priming people to recognize the discrepancy in giving toward identifiable and statistical victims has perverse effects: individuals give less to identifiable victims but do not increase giving to statistical victims, resulting in an overall reduction in caring and giving. Thus, it appears that, when thinking deliberatively, people discount sympathy towards identifiable victims but fail to generate sympathy toward statistical victims.
Risk taking propensity has been hypothesized to be a general personality disposition and many devices have been proposed for use in its assessment. Several types of studies relevant to the validity of these measures are reviewed. These studies expose a considerable lack of agreement among what are s
No abstract is provided for this article.
Most people are caring and will exert great effort to rescue individual victims whose needy plight comes to their attention. These same good people, however, often become numbly indifferent to the plight of individuals who are “one of many” in a much...
Despite knowing little about nanotechnology (so to speak), members of the public readily form opinions on whether its potential risks outweigh its potential benefits. On what basis are they forming their judgments? How are their views likely to evolve as they become exposed to more information about this novel science? We conducted a survey experiment (N = 1,850) to answer these questions. We found that public perceptions of nanotechnology risks, like public perceptions of societal risks generally, are largely affect driven: individuals' visceral reactions to nanotechnology (ones likely based on attitudes toward environmental risks generally) explain more of the variance in individuals' perceptions of nanotechnology's risks and benefits than does any other influence. These views are not static: even a small amount of information can generate changes in perceptions. But how those perceptions change depends heavily on individuals' values. Using a between-subjects design, we found that individuals exposed to balanced information polarize along cultural and political lines relative to individuals not exposed to information. We discuss what these findings imply for understanding of risk perceptions generally and for the future of nanotechnology as a subject of political conflict and regulation.
Subjective judgements, whether by experts or lay people, are a major component in any risk assessment. If such judgements are faulty, risk management efforts are likely to be misdirected. This paper begins with an analysis of biases exhibited by lay people and experts when they make judgements about risk. Next, the similarities and differences between lay and expert evaluations are examined in the context of a specific set of hazardous activities and technologies. Finally, insights from this research are applied to the problems of informing people about risk and forecasting public response towards nuclear power.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us lessons that can guide key decision makers in both the private and public sectors toward slowing climate change by reducing CO2 emissions now. Howard Kunreuther and Paul Slovic explain how decision makers can design a risk management strategy that heeds the advice of experts and addresses the cognitive biases which obstruct effective action.
