Lecture 3: Reading Flashcards
What is nanotechnology?
Science, engineering & technology conducted at the nanoscale which is about 1 to 100 nanometers
What did Kahan et al., 2009 find about cultural cognition of the risks & benefits of nanotechnology?
Aimed to determine how members of the public would react to balanced information about nanotechnology risks and benefits
Found strong evidence for the cultural cognition hypothesis; public attitudes are likely to be shaped by psychological dynamics
Shows biased assimilation and polarization - the tendency of people to conform to information that aligns with predispositions causing them to become more divided when exposed to balanced information
Kahan et al., 2009 Methodology
Divided 1862 Americans into 2 groups:
1. No information condition - told nothing about nanotechnology apart from its scientific process for producing and manipulating small particles.
2. Information-exposed condition - exposed to 2 paragraphs f equal length, one identifying possible benefits of nanotechnology, the other identifying risks.
Compared the two groups perceptions of nanotechnology risks and benefits to see the effect of exposure.
What is an anchoring and adjustment heuristic?
When making estimates, people often start out from a reference point that is salient in the situation (anchor) then adjust the first estimate to arrive at a final judgement
Example of anchoring and adjustment heuristic?
Tversky and Kahneman (1974): when asked to guess the % of African countries in the united nations, peoples estimates were heavily influences by an arbitrary number showed on a wheel of fortune
Average estimate went from 25% to 45% when the wheel showed a 65 rather than a 10
What is unrealistic optimism?
Peoples tendency to believe that they are more likely to experience positive events and less likely to experience negative events than others
Costa-Font et al., 2009: people tend to perceive risks of climate change to be smaller for themselves than others
What is temporal discounting of environmental risks?
Psychological phenomenon that outcomes in the far future are subjectively less significant than immediate outcomes
E.g people find an oily spill equally risky whether it may happen in one month, a year or 10 years (Bohm and Pfister, 2005)
What are different environmental values?
Dominant view in environmental ethics = some aspects of the environment (e.g rate species, landscapes) have an inherent value according to which the nonhuman world should be valued and respected for its own sake
Contrastingly, in environmental economics = people are sometimes highly reluctant to make trade off among different values e.g., may thing it is morally wrong to sacrifice nature / endangered species for money
What effects environmental risk perception?
Sacred values
Moral considerations
Deontological principle: least some acts are morally obligatory regardless of their consequences for human welfare
Tanner et al., 2008: deontological reasoning and protected value in environmental decision tasks methodology
Ppts were provided with several scenarios (choice between an act and omission e.g vaccinating vs non vaccinating children suffering form contaminated water)
The consequences varied in terms of whether they were risky or certain and whether they were framed in losses or gains
Tanner et al., 2008: deontological reasoning and protected value in environmental decision tasks results
rotected values were strongly associated with deontological orientations and with a stronger preference for acts than omissions
Ppts were strongly endorsing protected values and deontological orientations were immune to framing effects
Strong protected values make people focus on their dues for environmental acts rather than on framing of outcomes
What is deontological reasoning?
an ethical theory that says actions are good or bad according to a clear set of rules
What did Bohm (2003) find about environmental risks?
Asked respondents to indicate for a list of environmental risks how intensely they experienced these 4 emotion types in response to the risks
The emotional profiles of the risks =
Ethics based self directed emotions are particularly strong for individual behaviours such as car use
Ethic based other directed emotions (e.g outrage) are experienced when responsibility can be ascribed more clearly to one agent (e.g chemical dumps)
Species extinction triggers mainly prospective (e.g fear) and retrospective (e.g sadness) consequence-based emotion
Emotional reactions to natural risks (e.g earthquakes) are generally weaker than those to risks are caused by humans
What are technical estimates of risk?
Real risk: Useful concept for well-founded assessed risk. E.g., One study showed that estimated death rates for an illness were strongly correlated with statistical data.
Systematic deviance: Small risks can be overestimated; large risks can be overestimated.
Realistic risk perception when individuals have indirect or direct experience of the risk.
Sweden study 1: Risk assessments
Swedish population measured on the 3 risk targets mentioned above on 15 different hazards. Asked to rate the risks on a scale of 0 to 6. The results showed different ranking orders between the risks across the targets and significant differences between particularly personal & family against general risk.
Risk denial: Perceiving yourself to be less subjected to risk than others (unrealistic optimism).
