Emotions and risk perception

Transcription

1 Emotions and risk perception Lennart Sjöberg Center for Risk Research Stockholm School of Economics Stockholm Sweden Paper prepared for the Preference Elicitation Group workshop on Risk perception, attitudes, and behavior University of Barcelona May 11, 2007 Revised, May 13,

2 Emotions and risk perception 1 Lennart Sjöberg Abstract The role of emotions in risk perception has been held to be important, based mainly on findings in applications of the Psychometric Model and the notion of an Affect heuristic. These conclusions are criticized on the grounds that the work on Dread in the tradition of the Psychometric Model has been based not on emotion items but mainly on items measuring severity of consequences. Furthermore, affect is a word denoting emotions but in the concrete applications to the affect heuristic studies have been made not of emotions, but of attitudes and evaluations. In the present paper, actual data on emotions are investigated and it is found that emotions do indeed play an important role in risk perception and related attitudes. In one study it was found that interest in a hazard (a positive emotion) was positively correlated with perceived risk. Interest was an important explanatory factor in models of demand for risk mitigation. The results are correlational and experimental studies are needed to draw more certain conclusions about the causal role of emotions. Much recent work on emotions and attitudes suggests a 3-step process, where initial cognitive processing gives rise to emotions, which in turn guide the further, more elaborate, cognitive processing. The notion of the primacy of a primitive initial emotional reaction governing belief contents is rejected. Risk communication based on such a simplistic neurophysiological model is likely to fail. Introduction Emotions have frequently been assumed important in risk perception. The literature on this topic starts with the 1978 paper by Fischhoff et al. on the Psychometric Model (Fischhoff, Slovic, Lichtenstein, Read, & Combs, 1978). In that paper, and in many following publications, it is held that Dread is a major factor in risk perception 2, the second major factor being novelty. This tradition was the basis for later work on feeling in risk perception (Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch, 2001) and on the affect heuristic (Finucane, Alhakami, Slovic, & Johnson, 2000). However, there are several problems with this research paradigm. First, what was called dread was, on a closer inspection, made up of several items denoting severity of consequences, not emotions. Only one emotion item was included. When that particular item was singled out, it was found that it was only weakly related to perceived risk (Sjöberg, 2003b). The main explanatory power was carried by the non-emotional content of the Dread factor. A second problem has to do with the term affect (Sjöberg, 2006d). In several studies, it has been claimed that affect is a strong determinant of perceived risk. This, it would seem, is 1. Work supported in part by a grant from the Social Science Research Program of the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co (SKB). 2. Much of the work on the Psychometric Model uses variation between hazards, mean ratings, and not variation between individuals. The analysis of aggregated data gives a misleading picture of the strength of relationships. 2

3 important support for the notion that perceived risk is related to emotions. But is it really? Well, it all hinges on what is meant by the term affect, which has been used in social psychology in an unclear manner. The major denotation of affect in natural language is that of emotion. But it can also mean evaluation and that is how some social psychologists such as Fishbein have used the term (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). The currently accepted use of the term attitude is evaluation, i.e. a judgment of an object or a concept as good or bad (Alabarracín, Johnson, & Zanna, 2005). Affect in this sense is surely related to risk perception. Example: the attitude to nuclear power is strongly correlated with the perceived risk of this technology (Sjöberg, 1992). Does such a finding prove that emotion is important in the perceived risk of nuclear power? Of course not. But on the other hand, the reasoning just given does not prove the opposite either. It just implies that one frequently cited type of evidence for an emotionrisk perception link is irrelevant. Let us return to the discussion of the Dread factor. In the analysis of the single emotion item used in that literature it was fond that it was weakly related to perceived risk. This discussion needs a sharper conceptual analysis. Whose risk are we talking about and whose emotions? It turns out that much of the work uses risk in a very general and undefined sense. But risk is different when seen as pertaining to oneself, personal risk, or to others, general risk (Drottz- Sjöberg, 1993). If the target is left unspecified people probably interpret the task as rating general risk but some may be interpreting it as personal risk (Sjöberg, 2003a) The concept becomes blurred. That could be one reason for the weak results. Another reason has to do with the instructions for ratting emotions. Should it be the emotions of others or the emotions of the respondent him- or herself, when thinking about the concept? A final critical remark is about the concept of emotion. In virtually all work referred to above, emotion has been equated with dread. However, there are many other emotions (Izard, 1977). Lerner et al. found anger to be an important emotional response to the 9/11 events, among men, while women responded more frequently with fear (Lerner, Gonzalez, Small, & Fischhoff, 2003). Even positive emotions may play a role. In a previous study, I found interest to be positively related to the level of perceived risk (Sjöberg, 1999, July). Hence, a range of emotions should be studied, not only fear. Summing up, while it seems reasonable that emotions should be related to risk perception, previous work has not documented such a relationship. The purpose of the present paper is to study the relationship between perceived risk and related attitudes to emotions, making clear whose emotions are referred to, as well as who the risk target is. A wide range of emotions is studied. Method sets. Data sources. The analyses reported here come from 3 different survey data 1. Survey data from representative samples of the Swedish population, as well as candidate communities (Östhammar and Oskarshamn) in the search for a site for a final repository for spent nuclear fuel (Sjöberg, 2006c) and a control community (Finspång). About 500 respondents participated in each sample, with a response rate of about 50 percent.. 2. A follow-up study of the target of emotion ratings and the attribution of emotions to other people (Sjöberg, 2006a), N=403. These were people who had responded 3

4 positively to taking part in a follow-up study after they had been randomly selected from the population. Those who responded were not strictly representative but data showed no obvious differences from random samples, except for their higher level of education. 3. Data from a representative sample of the population concerning policy attitudes and salience/interest of the hazards, N=747. The response rate was 54.1 percent. For further details, see Sjöberg et al. (Sjöberg et al., 2000). Variables. Emotional reactions were measured by the following by the following instruction: Make a fast and spontaneous assessment of your feeling about a nuclear waste repository in your municipality. A number of emotional reactions were assessed. Note that most of these terms are negative, in accordance with emotion theory (Izard, 1977). The emotions investigated were: Anger Contempt Fear Interest 3 Sorrow Satisfaction 4 Guilt Shame Worry Pessimism Optimism The emotion scales were reverse scored, i.e. higher values implied a weaker emotional reaction. Data were also obtained on perceived risk and attitude/evaluation of a nuclear waste repository and nuclear power. Three other hazards were studied as well: terrorism, genetically modified food and mobile telephones. For the latter hazards data on perceived risk were available. Details on ratings scales etc can be found in the references to the original data collection. In the third sample, questions were posed about interest and policy attitude with regard to 19 hazards. The respondents were asked to rate "How interesting do you think the following risks are - how much do you for example want to read about them, discuss them or think about them? They were also asked to respond to the question How important do you think it is that the Swedish state or municipalities (local and regional) acts to diminish the following risks? The ratings were done on 8-step category scales in both cases. 3. There is good evidence that interest is an emotion (Silvia, 2006). 4. Used to measure the basic hedonic mood and emotion dimension (Sjöberg, Svensson, & Persson, 1979). 4

5 Results Emotions and policy attitudes The emotion ratings were used to form two indices, one of positive and one of negative emotions. The means (standardized) of the rated emotional reactions to a local repository are given in Fig. 1 for the four samples. 0,5 0,4 Positive em otions Negative emotions 0,3 0,2 0,1 0-0,1-0,2-0,3-0,4-0,5 Oskarshamn Östhammar Finspång The nation Figure 1. Mean rated emotions in four samples. Standardized values. Note the large, indeed dramatic, differences between the two municipalities where siting work is under way, and the rest of the country. These differences match closely the attitudes to a local repository, which were quite negative in the national and control samples, positive in the two candidate communites (Sjöberg, 2006b). Inserting emotion factors in a model of attitude to the repository, together with some other important explanatory variables, gave the results illustrated in Fig. 2. Model of attitude to the repository explaining 65 percent of the variance Social trust Attitude to Nuclear power Positive emotions Negative emotions Attitude to the repository Epistemic trust Risk to the municipality Figure 2. Model of the attitude to a repository, explaining 65 percent of the variance. The numbers are standardized regression coefficients. 5

6 Note that emotion factors were the most important ones, followed by epistemic trust, perceived risk and attitude to nuclear power, in that order. Social trust carried very little explanatory power in the model. Additional analyses showed that novelty and dread added nothing or very little to the model. Note also that attitude to nuclear power is an important explanatory variable. It is a frequent finding that attitudes reflect a common underlying image, which finds its expressions in diverse response modes, such as beliefs and values (Sjöberg & Biel, 1983). A closer look at all 11emotion factors showed that the most important 5 emotion factor was anger, not fear. Fear and satisfaction (hedonic response) were about equally important, and clearly less so than anger. The total set of 11 emotion factors accounted for 63 percent of the variance of attitude to a local repository. A few simple questions about emotional reactions were thus sufficient to model attitude. Adding the traditional dread item increased explanatory power by only 1 percent. Anger was found to be important also in a study of reactions to the attack on the WTC in 2001 (Lerner et al., 2003), but in that study positive emotions were not investigated, for obvious reasons. The prominence of anger is in line with Sandman's outrage model (Sandman, 1989). Perceived risk and emotions Data were available on the emotional reactions to mobile telephones, and the perceived risk of mobile telephones, see Table 1. Explained variance of perceived risk (personal and general combined) was 26 percent. Table 1. Regression analysis of risk as a function of emotions, mobile telephones. Emotion Beta t-value Significance Anger Contempt Fear Interest Sorrow Satisfaction Guilt Shame Worry Pessimism Optimism Important in the sense of being strongly correlated with attitude. 6

7 Fear dominates the picture but worry and optimism also carry some significant explanatory power. Corresponding results for genetically modified food, explained variance 21 percent, are shown in Table 2. Table 2. Regression analysis of risk as a function of emotions, genetically modified food. Emotion Beta t-value Significance Anger Contempt Fear Interest Sorrow Satisfaction Guilt Shame Worry Pessimism Optimism The explanatory power of emotions was somewhat lower in the case of terrorism, 18 percent, see Table 3. Table 3. Regression analysis of risk as a function of emotions, terrorism. Emotion Beta t-value Significance Anger Contempt Fear Interest Sorrow Satisfaction Guilt Shame Worry Pessimism Optimism Again, fear dominated but worry and interest also contributed. To simplify things, the 8 negative emotions were pooled to one index and the 3 positive emotions to one. Regression analyses showed that both negative and positive emotions played a significant role in perceived risk in all 4 cases. In these analyses, the proportion of explained variance was somewhat lower than in the analyses where all emotions were entered separately into the analysis. The amount of explained variance varied from 14 to 29 percent. All beta 7

8 weights were significant, p< Negative emotions were more important than positive emotions, however. See Table 4. Table 4. Results of regression analyses of 4 types of risk, with pooled measures of negative and positive emotions as explanatory variables. Hazard Beta, negative Beta, positive R 2 adj emotions emotions Nuclear waste Terrorism Mobile telephones Genetically modified food Women reported stronger fear and anger than men did, in all four cases. The differences were small, however, with regard to terrorism; statistically highly significant in the other three cases (nuclear waste, mobile telephones and genetically modified food). Women did not report stronger emotions in all respects, however. They tended to reported weaker positive emotions than the men did, in all cases. Consider nuclear waste, see Fig. 3. There was an interaction, p< (Similar significant interactions occurred also for the judgments of mobile telephones and genetically modified food) Negative emotions Positive emotions Mean emotion rating Men Women Figure 3. Mean positive and negative emotions to a nuclear waste repository for men and women. The figure shows that both groups exhibited more negative than positive emotions to a nuclear waste repository. 8

9 Target of emotion ratings The importance of the target (who is having the emotional reactions) was clarified in a followup study where the respondents were asked to rate their own emotional reaction to the concept of nuclear power, as well as the expected emotional reactions of others to the same concept. The correlations between emotional reactions and attitude to nuclear power are given in Table 5. It is seen that correlations were quite strong with one s own emotional reaction, about zero with the emotional reaction expected from others. Table 5. Correlations between emotional reactions and the attitude to nuclear power. Emotion Own emotional reaction to nuclear power The anticipated emotional reaction of others to nuclear power Anger Contempt Fear Interest Sadness Satisfaction Guilt Shame Worry The systematic difference between one s own emotional reaction and that attributed to others is also illustrated in Fig. 4, where mean the two sets of mean rated emotional reactions are plotted. The emotional reactions of others are rated as much stronger than one s own, a finding, which resembles, to some extent, the common finding that personal risk is rated as lower than general risk (Harris & Middleton, 1994). It may also throw some light on the common notion that the public will panic, often argued by representatives of authorities who tend to refrain from providing full information to the public for that reason. 3,5 Others' emotional reaction 3,0 2,5 2,0 1,5 1,4 1,6 1,8 2,0 2,2 2,4 2,6 2,8 3,0 3,2 3,4 Own emotional reaction Figure 4. Mean emotional reactions attributed to others vs. own reactions. 9

10 Summing up, emotions can be powerful explanatory factors of attitudes and risk perception, but how they are measured is crucially important. Special analysis of interest and policy attitude So far, almost all thinking about risk perception, including the psychometric paradigm, has assumed, more or less implicitly, that risk is something negative and that thinking about it is negative as well. The properties of hazards are all formulated as negative, and the psychological effects of perceiving a risk are assumed negative emotions such as dread or worry. Yet, the reason that people are active with something is usually that they are interested and feel positive about doing it, in one sense or another (Sjöberg & Magneberg, 1990). This is not as absurd as it may sound. Even if a hazard is regarded as a threat, we may feel positive about acting on it, feeling hope that something may be done to mitigate the risk, and feeling increased self-esteem since we act on an important societal issue. Hence, interest may be positively related to risk perception and risk attitudes. This possibility is tested in the present section. The correlations between interest and demand for risk mitigation are given in Table 6, which also includes estimates of regression coefficients for interest, and proportion of explained variance of demand for risk mitigation for each hazard. The regression analyses were based on 7 predictors 6. The mean proportion of variance accounted for was 0.157, which shows that demand for risk mitigation is relatively hard to account for. Interest obtained the largest regression weight in 18 of the 19 analyses. The table also shows that interest was relatively highly, and consistently, correlated with demand for risk mitigation for this broad sample of hazards. 6. Personal risk, general risk, personal protection possibility, trust in authorities, personal knowledge about the hazards, authorities knowledge about the hazard and interest. 10

11 Table 6. Correlations, regression coefficients and explained variance of demand for risk mitigation (models based on interest + 6 other predictors). All values statistically significant at the level. Hazard Correlation interest - demand for mitigation Regression coefficient for interest Explained variance of demand for mitigation Alcohol consumption Air pollution High voltage power lines Indoors radon radiation Food irradiated for preservation Traffic accident Depletion of the ozone layer Swedish nuclear power Western Europe nuclear power Eastern Europe nuclear power Natural background radiation Nuclear waste Food spoiled by radioactive substances X-ray diagnostics Chemical waste Nuclear arms Floods Radioactive fall-out from the Chernobyl accident "Mad cow" disease (BSE)

12 Discussion The present results show clearly that emotions are important explanatory factors in perceived risk and related attitudes. The fact that there is a moderately strong and consistent relationship between emotional reactions and risk perception is documented in our work as reported elsewhere (Drottz-Sjöberg & Sjöberg, 1990; Sjöberg, 1998). However, the emotions, which are important, are the ones experienced by the respondent him- or herself, not the emotions attributed to others. The instructions must make this point very clear. The results also show that there is a range of emotions, which have potential importance in risk perception. The negative emotions seem to play the most important role, but positive emotions (lack of such emotions) are also of importance. The results of the study on interest/salience reported here might seem surprising. Apparently, people did not want to close their eyes to hazards they regarded to be in need of being reduced; on the contrary, they were more interested in them. Note that interest in the sense of spontaneous arousal of the emotion functioned differently, it was (albeit weakly) negatively correlated with perceived risk. People apparently do not repress or suppress threatening information, they attend to it. This is in line with the current analysis of memory and trauma (McNally, 2003). Further work on interest as a spontaneous reaction vs., interest as allocation of time and commitment would be important. It should also be noted that interest in an activity is probably negatively related to perceived risk of that activity (Drottz-Sjöberg & Sjöberg, 1991). These findings do not imply that emotions are the only important factor in perceived risk, of course. Valuation, or attitude, is also important, and so is trust, especially epistemic trust (Sjöberg & Wester-Herber, in press). More general ideological and political preferences may also play a role (Sjöberg & af Wahlberg, 2002), although it is by now well established that the value dimensions of Cultural Theory (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982) play only a very minor role (Sjöberg, 1997). Hence, evidence is emerging for a causal link from specific emotions to attitudes, and hence probably also to risk perceptions (Clore & Schnall, 2005; Haidt, 2001). The present results are all based on correlations, not experimental data. Hence, the question of causation is difficult. Are emotions prior to and causes of perceived risk or is it the other way round? Zajonc argued that preferences need no inferences in a famous paper (Zajonc, 1980). However, although there may be a fast affective response prior to elaborate cognitive processing, that affective response presumes at least some semantic processing (Storbeck, Robinson, & McCourt, 2006). Such processing, e.g. of threat information, could still be unconscious (Öhman, 1997). Storbeck, Robinson and McCourt wrote, in their review of current knowledge on the primacy of affect : Although people can react to objects that they cannot consciously identify, such affective reactions are dependent upon prior semantic analysis within the visual cortex. The authors propose that the features of objects must first be integrated, and then the objects themselves must be categorized and identified, all prior to affective analysis. [(Storbeck et al., 2006), p. 41]. But what gives rise to emotions? In current work on emotions, it has been hard to find any other psychological basis than the appraisal of the situation (Siemer & Reisenzein, 2007; Silvia, 2006). If emotion is driven by appraisal it seems reasonable to conclude that perceived 12

13 risk gives rise to emotional reactions, not the other way round. Another possibility is that a preliminary appraisal gives rise to emotions, which in turn govern the further development of new and more fully developed appraisals. Such a three-stage process seems reasonable in for example the perception of political leaders where correlations between attitude-evaluation and emotions have been found (Ottati, Steenbergen, & Riggle, 1992). The first stage might be largely governed by peripheral attributes. Handsome politicians are more popular (Lewis & Bierly, 1990) and get more votes, but voters give more developed cognitive justifications for their preferences, they do not refer to superficial cues. Indeed, the reasons given for choice may be little related to the really important factors behind a choice (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). In risk perception, it is possible that peripheral cues of a somewhat different kind drive the preliminary appraisal stage. For example, people who subscribe to New Age beliefs are generally skeptical to technology and science and react with negative emotions to such concepts (Sjöberg & af Wahlberg, 2002). Such emotional reactions might then, in a final stage, govern information seeking and belief construction. The result will be the strong correlations between emotions and risk related beliefs observed here. The present results should not be taken as a justification for an emotion based approach to risk communication. Emotions have an ultimate basis in cognition. The popular idea of a low route to emotion via the amygdala, short-cutting the cortex (LeDoux, 1996) has not been supported by recent work, as noted in the review by Storbeck, Robinson and McCourt cited above. People are emotional, yes, but also cognitive, and ideologically concerned. The picture of the little concerned consumer who can be reached by means of persuasive tactics along the peripheral route (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) is probably irrelevant in risk communication where people are deeply concerned about matters of life and death. 13

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