Abstract
Existing research shows that evaluations of the risks and benefits of various hazards (i.e., technologies and activities) are inversely related. The affect heuristic explains the negative relation between risks and benefits, as based on the strength of positive or negative affect associated with a hazard. Research on the affect heuristic previously investigated under which conditions people judge risk and benefits independently, focusing on expertise as a factor that might exempt from inversely related judgements of risk and benefits. Measurements within Dual Process Theories have been found to be associated with rational, analytical decision making and accurate judgments. In this paper we investigated the extent to which rational information processing styles can predict the risk-benefit relation of technologies in a medical and food applications and whether the attitudes influence the strength or direction of the relationship. Using the Need for Cognition Scale (NFC), a psychometric-based risk scale and an explicit measure of attitude, in a representative sample of 3228 Swedes, we found that the high NFC group judged the risks and benefits of technologies to be inversely related. In contrast, the low NFC group judged the risks and benefits to be positively related. These results were confirmed across all studied technologies by applying moderation analysis. We discuss the results in light of recent research on cognitive processing and polarization over technologies’ risks.
Highlights
Existing research has demonstrated that evaluations of the risks and benefits of various hazards are not independent of each other
We aimed to determine (RQ2) whether the inverse relation is conditional upon information processing style and affect and, if so, if this effect varies across different technologies
We examined the explanatory impact of individual differences in information processing style on the-relation between risks and benefits across five modern technologies in the area of food and medical applications: (1) gene technology for plant breeding; (2) pesticides; (3) food additives–“E”-numbers; (4) gene technology for stem cells; and (5) vaccinations for humans
Summary
Existing research has demonstrated that evaluations of the risks and benefits of various hazards (i.e., technologies or activities) are not independent of each other. Studies have typically documented an inverse relationship between risks and benefits, in which hazards are either judged as high in danger and low in benefits, or low in danger and high in benefits [1,2,3,4,5,6]. This inverse risk-benefit relation has been examined in relation to numerous hazards, including environmental hazards [1, 7] and new technologies [8], as well as in judgements in the area of finance [9,10,11]. Fischhoff and collaborators [1] found that motorcycles and nuclear power are judged as very low in benefits and very high in risks, while antibiotics and vaccinations are perceived as high in benefits and low in risks.
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