Joint Influences on Perceived Vulnerability and Behavior

人们经常遇到的情况是，他们必须决定如何应对潜在的危险或健康威胁(例如，龙卷风警报、流感病毒、未煮熟的食物、石棉、运动伤害、黑暗的巷子、香烟烟雾、暴露在阳光下、结冰的道路、比特斗牛)。一个人对危险或威胁的反应应该取决于伤害的可能性等。例如，一个人因为伤害的可能性可以忽略不计而停止或避免想要的活动是愚蠢的，但继续与严重伤害的可能性很高相关的活动将是不明智的。因此，了解是什么塑造了人们？S对脆弱性(即威胁造成伤害的主观可能性)的看法，以及这些看法如何影响行为，这是至关重要的。这是一个复杂的挑战，因为对于任何给定的威胁，都有可能影响感知到的脆弱性的各种信息。为了说明这一点，考虑一个即将走在森林小径上的人，他正在思考携带西尼罗河病毒的蚊子的威胁。人们对西尼罗河的感知可能会受到以下因素的影响：过去步行被叮咬的频率，这条小径似乎在多大程度上代表了吸引蚊子的类型，报纸上关于西尼罗河病毒感染率的报道，以及其他徒步旅行者是否对这种病毒感到担忧。这个项目的一个关键目标是完善和测试一种新的理论，即各种因素如何共同影响人们对脆弱和行为的看法。与现有理论不同，这一理论明确表示了驱动脆弱性的六个因素，并在人与人之间做出了重要区分-S明确报告了判断可能性和驱动行为的脆弱性感知。该项目的第二个相互关联的目标是开发一种灵活的基于计算机的范式，可供广泛的研究人员用于实验测试各种联合操作因素如何在存在潜在威胁的情况下影响决策和行为。该项目的理论和经验结果应对与不确定情况下的主观威胁评估和/或决策有关的领域产生重要影响。这包括健康心理学、职业安全/伤害预防和决策等领域。这些研究还应该为如何最好地衡量人们--S感知的健康风险脆弱性--以及如何设计旨在让人们意识到他们的脆弱性的公共卫生干预措施提供洞察力。

People routinely encounter situations in which they must decide how to respond to a potential danger or health threat (e.g., tornado siren, flu virus, undercooked food, asbestos, sports injury, a dark alley, cigarette smoke, sun exposure, an icy road, a pit bull). A person?s response to a danger or threat should depend on, among other things, the likelihood of harm. For example, a person would be foolish to stop or avoid a desired activity because of a negligible likelihood of harm, yet would be ill-advised to continue with an activity associated with a high likelihood of serious harm. Consequently, it is crucial to understand what shapes people?s perceptions of vulnerability (i.e., subjective likelihood of harm from a threat) and how these perceptions influence behavior. This is a complex challenge because for any given threat, there is a variety of information that could influence perceived vulnerability. To illustrate, consider a person who is about to walk on a forest trail and is thinking about the threat of mosquitoes carrying West Nile Virus. Perceived vulnerability to West Nile might be affected by knowledge of the frequencies of getting bites on past walks, the extent to which the trail seems representative of the type that attracts mosquitoes, a newspaper story about the rates of West Nile Virus, and whether other hikers seem to be concerned about the virus.A key goal for this project is to refine and test a new theory of how various factors jointly shape perceptions of vulnerability and behavior. Unlike existing theories, this one is explicit in representing six factors that drive vulnerability and also makes an important distinction between people?s explicit reports of judged likelihood and the perceptions of vulnerability that drive behavior. An interrelated second goal of the project is to develop a flexible computer-based paradigm that can be used by a broad array of researchers for experimentally testing how various jointly operating factors influence decisions and behavior in the presence of a potential threat. The theory and empirical findings from this project should have important implications across fields concerned with subjective threat assessment and/or decision making under uncertainty. This includes fields like health psychology, occupational safety/injury prevention, and decision making. The studies should also provide insight about how to best measure people?s perceived vulnerability to health risks, as well as how to design public?health interventions aimed at making people aware of their vulnerability.