The Cultural Cognition of Risk: Psychological and Social Mechanisms

风险的文化认知：心理和社会机制

• 批准号: 0621840
• 负责人: Dan Kahan
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-01 至 2008-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0621840&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Cultural; Cognition; Risk; Psychological; Social

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.

“风险的文化认知”是指个体倾向于将他们对风险大小的信念与他们对潜在危险活动的基于文化的道德评价相一致。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 = 1，800）来评估这一现象。他们发现，人们对无数风险（包括气候变化、持有枪支、吸毒和各种医疗程序等）的信念以文化认知最能解释的模式分布在人们之间。但是，尽管这项研究提供了强有力的证据，表明文化承诺确实会影响风险认知，但这项研究并没有确切地确定文化为什么或如何发挥这种影响。这就是本研究报告的目的。研究人员将利用创新的在线测试方法进行一系列实验，旨在揭示文化认知运作的社会和心理机制。他们的主要假设之一是，个人对信息的情感抵制预示着对他们文化身份核心活动的干扰。另一个原因是，与那些似乎怀有竞争性文化取向的人相比，人们认为那些似乎与他们有共同文化取向的风险传播者更可信。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，而且还将产生对不同文化取向的人如何就适当的风险缓解政策达成一致的实际见解。