Optimism and the perceptions of new risks
Optimism and the perceptions of new risks
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DOI：
10.1080/13669870802445800
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发表时间：
2009-01-01
影响因子：
5.1
通讯作者：
Rudisill, Caroline
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Costa-Font, Joan;Mossialos, Elias;Rudisill, Caroline
虽然许多风险，特别是新的风险，是不能客观量化的，但个人仍然使用不完整或不清楚的关于这些风险的真实性质的证据来形成对风险的看法。在众所周知的风险情况下，比如吸烟，个人认为自己的风险比其他人小，表现出“乐观倾向”。尽管现有证据支持乐观偏向发生在个体熟悉的风险的情况下，但尚不存在证据表明乐观偏向适用于新的风险。本文通过考察个人对自身风险与社会和环境风险的认知差距来解决这个问题，这些风险被概念化为社会和/或环境乐观主义偏见。我们利用2002年UEA-MORI风险调查来检验乐观偏见的存在及其对五个与科学和技术相关的主题的风险认知和接受的影响：气候变化、移动电话、放射性废物、转基因食品和基因测试。我们的发现提供了遵循类似模式的社会和环境乐观倾向的证据，对于那些给个人带来巨大好处的风险(例如手机辐射)，而不是那些对社会或环境影响更大的风险(例如转基因食品或气候变化)，乐观偏见似乎更大。社会乐观主义偏见被发现降低了对受到媒体大量关注的风险的风险认知，即气候变化和转基因食品。另一方面，乐观的偏见似乎会增加人们对基因检测的风险认知。
While many risks, especially new ones, are not objectively quantifiable, individuals still form perceptions of risks using incomplete or unclear evidence about the true nature of those risks. In the case of well known risks, such as smoking, individuals perceive risks to be smaller for themselves than others, exhibiting 'optimism bias'. Although existing evidence supports optimism bias occurring in the case of risks about which individuals are familiar, evidence does not yet exist to suggest that optimism bias applies for new risks. This paper addresses this question by examining the gap in perceptions of risks individuals have for themselves versus society and the environment, conceptualised as social and/or environmental optimism biases. We draw upon the 2002 UEA-MORI Risk Survey to examine the existence of optimism bias and its effects on risk perceptions and acceptance regarding five science and technology-related topics: climate change, mobile phones, radioactive waste, GM food and genetic testing. Our findings provide evidence of social and environmental optimism bias following similar patterns and optimism bias appearing greater for those risks bringing sizeable benefit to individuals (e.g. mobile phone radiation) rather than those more acutely affecting society or the environment (e.g. GM food or climate change). Social optimism bias is found to reduce risk perceptions for risks that have received large amounts of media attention, namely, climate change and GM food. On the other hand, optimism bias appears to increase risk perceptions about genetic testing.