The Cultural Cognition of Risk: Psychological and Social Mechanisms

“风险的文化认知”指的是个体倾向于将他们对风险程度的信念与他们对假定的危险活动的文化基础道德评价相一致。在之前的一项研究中，研究人员调查了一个大的国家样本（N = 1800）来评估这一现象。他们发现，对无数风险的信念——包括气候变化、拥有枪支、吸毒和各种医疗程序等——在人与人之间的分布模式，最好是用文化认知来解释。但是，虽然这项研究提供了强有力的证据，表明文化承诺确实会塑造风险认知，但该研究并没有准确地确定文化为什么或如何施加这种影响。这就是本研究的目的。利用创新的在线测试方法，研究者将开展一系列旨在揭示文化认知运作的社会和心理机制的实验。他们的主要假设之一是，个人对那些预示着对其文化身份核心活动的干扰的信息会产生情感上的抗拒。另一个原因是，人们更相信那些与自己有着相同文化取向的风险传播者，而不是那些与自己有着不同文化取向的人。预计这一实验项目的结果不仅将加深对风险认知如何形成的科学理解，而且还将对不同文化取向的人如何就适当的减轻风险政策达成一致产生实际见解。

The "cultural cognition of risk" refers to the tendency of individuals to conform their beliefs about the magnitude of risks to their culturally grounded moral appraisals of putatively dangerous activities. In a previous study the investigators surveyed a large national sample (N = 1,800) to assess this phenomenon. They found that beliefs about myriad risks--ones involving climate change, firearm possession, drug use, and various medical procedures, among others--are distributed across persons in patterns best explained by cultural cognition. But while this study furnished strong evidence that cultural commitments do indeed shape risk perceptions, the study did not identify precisely why or how culture exerts this influence. That is the objective of the current study. Using innovative on-line testing methods, the investigators will carry out a series of experiments aimed at uncovering the social and psychological mechanisms through which cultural cognition operates. Among their principal hypotheses is that individuals experience emotional resistance to information that portends interference with activities central to their cultural identities. Another is that individuals impute greater credibility to risk communicators who appear to share their cultural orientations than to those who appear to harbor competing ones. It is expected that the results of the this experimental project will not only deepen scientific understanding of how risk perceptions are formed, but also generate practical insights into how persons of diverse cultural orientations can reach agreement on appropriate policies of risk mitigation.