The place of emotions in a world of risks Lennart Sjöberg RISK PSYCHOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT AND SAFETY: The RIPENSA-symposium Karlstad, June 29 - July 1, 2009

The problem Do emotions have some influence on risk perceptions? What are the empirical bases for making such an assertion?

The Psychometric Model Published in 1978, widely believed to have shown that ”dread” is an important factor in perceived risk However, the strength of relationships is exaggerated as it is based on aggregated data Besides, the ”dread” factor contains only one emotion item – the rest concern ”severity of consequences”. ”Dread” ratings also seem to refer to the emotions of others

”The affect heuristic” The notion that ”affect” is strongly correlated with risk perception is correct when affect is measured as attitude or evaluation But attitude is not the same as emotion – terminological confusion has been caused by treating both emotion and evaluation as ”affect”. In addition, affect is usually interpreted as emotion in natural language – an important point because users of risk perception research are often not trained in social science or psychology. How could they know that ”affect” really is not emotion but evaluation?

Furthermore… The ”dread” factor is about only ONE of the several human emotions. Lerner et al showed that anger may be a more common reaction to a threat (among men, at least). Besides, there are positive emotions as well… Hence, the issue should be approached with a range of all basic emotions

Emotions studied Anger Contempt Fear Interest Sorrow Satisfaction Guilt Shame Worry Pessimism Optimism Example: “Make a fast and spontaneous assessment of your feeling about a nuclear waste repository in your municipality”.

Data sources 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, a response rate of about 50 percent. 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 positively to take 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. Data from a representative sample of the population concerning policy attitudes and salience/interest of the hazards. N=747. Response rate 54.1 percent. For further details, see Sjöberg et al. (Sjöberg et al., 2000).

Hazards studied Perceived risk and attitude/evaluation of a nuclear waste repository Nuclear power Terrorism Genetically modified food Mobile telephones

Table 4. Results of regression analyses of 4 types of risk, with pooled measures of negative and positive emotions as explanatory variables. HazardBeta, negative emotions Beta, positive emotions R 2 adj Nuclear waste Terrorism Mobile telephones Genetically modified food Comment: both negative and positive emotions contribute!

Comment: women report stronger negative and weaker Positive emotions

Attitude to the repository Risk to the municipality Epistemic trust Negative emotions Positive emotions Social trust Attitude to Nuclear power Model of attitude to the repository explaining 65 percent of the variance Note importance of Emotion factors!

Others are so emotional!

Table 5. Correlations between emotional reactions and the attitude to nuclear power. EmotionOwn emotional reaction to nuclear power The anticipated emotional reaction of others to nuclear power Anger Contempt Fear Interest Sadness Satisfaction Guilt Shame Worry

HazardCorrelation 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)

What did it show? People were more actively concerned with more threatening objects or concepts This is the opposite of suppression/repression The interest factor was by far the most important factor in policy attitude

Finally: what causes what? Correlations emotion-perceived risk are clearly strong – but what does this finding mean? Appraisal theory says that emotions are caused by cognitive processes, by ”interpreting” the situation Is perceived risk the cause of emotion? Or is emotion primary, fast and ”automatic”?

In contemporary emotion psychology… Both views co-exist: emotion as primary and emotion as the effect of cognition A compromise view: Perceived risk is an elaborate and relatively late product in a chain of events which start with ”primitive/automatic” appraisals, leading to emotions, which in turn guide further cognitive elaborations

What about risk communication, then? People are not emotional, or cognitive, but both Perceived risk is strongly related to emotions but also to other factors such as epistemic trust, attitude and ideology Risk issues tend to be highly involving and important, therefore eliciting a ”central route” to attitude and belief formation – i.e. more cognition

Thank you for your attention!