Rethinking Conventional Wisdom: Ecological Effects on Potential Danger Preoccupation Salience

Abstract

Despite frequent reliance on conventional wisdom (CW) about potential threats in political, policy, intelligence, and other domains, until now there have been few empirical studies addressing the spread, common features, or differences of precautionary preoccupations across ecologies. We describe some of our initial investigations of any significant variation or subordination of dominant potential danger themes within and between populations and ecologies. We hypothesized that ecological triggers and specific cognitive capacities constrain the dominance of particular precautionary themes generally, as well as their variability between distinct populations. Our initial results support these claims by indicating that females, cross-culturally, worried more about predation/assault threats than males (a universal tendency) and that South Africans were more worried about predation/assault and depletion of resources than their counterparts in the United Kingdom (a variation). Furthermore, non-white South Africans were more worried in all domains when compared to white South Africans.