Hazard Manager Stereotypes as Influences on Trust, Confidence and Cooperation

危害管理者的刻板印象对信任、信心和合作的影响

• 批准号: 1427039
• 负责人: Branden Johnson
• 金额: $ 24万
• 依托单位: Decision Science Research Institute
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-08-01 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1427039&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Hazard; Manager; Stereotypes; Influences; Trust

Organizations managing hazards must be trusted enough by citizens to gain policy support and compliance with recommendations for personal protective behavior, yet both trust and distrust are hard to change. Institutional stereotypes may contribute to this resistance to change. This project will use focus groups and a survey to identify stereotypical attributes of three institutional types at both general (government, business, nonprofits) and specific (government agency, corporation, advocacy groups) levels, including both common stereotypes (e.g., government red tape; business profit-chasing; nonprofit sentimentality) and rarer potential attributes (e.g., whether the institution values respect for authority, or purity and sanctity, in addition to reducing harm). These responses will be compared to attributes of specific national organizations (e.g., Food and Drug Administration [FDA]) in these three categories in varied hazard domains (e.g., food safety, nuclear power). This will allow for seeing whether organizations rated as being ?typical? of their category have the same perceived attributes as when they are rated as more abstract entities (such as "government" or "corporation"). A subsequent experiment will assess how much stereotypes affect trust, confidence, and cooperation when a specific organization (e.g., FDA) is managing a hazard, and a citizen has situation-specific information-not just stereotypes-to help determine whether the organization is trustworthy. Experiments will then test alternative messages based on either stereotype manipulation or other factors affecting trust (e.g., feeling that you share salient values with the organization; feelings that the hazardous activity or process is "good" or "bad")to see if the messages affect cooperation in real cases (e.g., donations to specific advocacy groups; purchases of radon test kits in a specific state). Stereotypes of institutions may be at least partly responsible for perseverance of (dis)trust, yet this potential causal link has not been tested; we do not even know whether these stereotypes are relatively simple or complex, or whether they vary across people, institutional categories, or topical domains (e.g., food safety versus radon). The practical implications of this research should be to help government, business, and nonprofit managers understand how much influence their actions will have on citizens' and consumers' views of how they will or do manage hazards. If stereotypes beyond the control of managers dominate trust judgments and cooperation, then managers can abandon attempts to build trust and focus on convincing people that it is in their own best interest to perform a specific behavior (e.g., test for radon) regardless of whether they trust the institution. If the experiments show instead that situation-specific information about the organization swamps any effects of its institutional stereotype, then managers will know to emphasize their specific situation in order to improve how the organization is perceived or how much cooperation (e.g., adoption of recommendations for self-preservation, purchases, or donations) it gets from the public. Mapping of how organizations are positioned relative to others in their institutional category (e.g., one corporation versus another), or to extra-category organizations in their topic domain (i.e., potential allies or enemies), could be used by organizations to evaluate where they might need to strengthen their reputations. Given the value of distrust in a democracy depends upon citizens being well-informed about institutions, this map if posted in publicly accessible forums (online or offline) could help citizens evaluate organizations with which they must deal, raising personal efficacy and (potentially) institutional responsiveness to citizen demands.

管理危险的组织必须得到公民的足够信任，才能获得政策支持和遵守个人保护行为的建议，然而信任和不信任都很难改变。制度上的刻板印象可能助长了这种对变革的抵制。该项目将使用焦点小组和调查来确定一般（政府、企业、非营利组织）和特定（政府机构、公司、倡导团体）层面的三种机构类型的刻板印象属性，包括常见的刻板印象（例如，政府繁文缛节；企业追逐利润；非营利组织的感伤）和罕见的潜在属性（例如，除了减少伤害之外，该机构是否重视对权威的尊重，还是纯洁和神圣）。这些回应将与特定国家组织（例如，食品和药物管理局[FDA]）在不同危害领域（例如，食品安全，核电）的这三个类别中的属性进行比较。这将允许查看组织是否被评为“典型”？在他们的类别中，有相同的感知属性，当他们被评为更抽象的实体时（如“政府”或“公司”）。随后的实验将评估当一个特定的组织（例如，FDA）正在管理危险时，当一个公民有特定情况的信息（不仅仅是刻板印象）来帮助确定该组织是否值得信赖时，刻板印象对信任、信心和合作的影响有多大。然后，实验将根据刻板印象操纵或其他影响信任的因素（例如，感觉你与组织有共同的突出价值观；感觉危险活动或过程是“好”还是“坏”）来测试替代信息，以查看这些信息是否影响实际情况下的合作（例如，向特定倡导团体捐款；在特定州购买氡检测试剂盒）。对机构的刻板印象可能至少在一定程度上导致了（不信任）的坚持，但这种潜在的因果关系尚未得到检验；我们甚至不知道这些刻板印象是相对简单还是复杂，也不知道它们是否因人、机构类别或专题领域（例如，食品安全与氡）而异。这项研究的实际意义应该是帮助政府、企业和非营利组织的管理者了解他们的行为将对公民和消费者对他们将如何或正在如何管理危害的看法产生多大的影响。如果管理者无法控制的刻板印象主导了信任判断和合作，那么管理者就可以放弃建立信任的尝试，而专注于说服人们，无论他们是否信任该机构，执行特定行为（例如，测试氡）都符合他们自己的最大利益。如果实验表明，关于组织的特定情况信息淹没了其制度刻板印象的任何影响，那么管理者将知道强调他们的特定情况，以改善组织的感知方式，或者从公众那里获得多少合作（例如，采用自我保护、购买或捐赠的建议）。组织如何定位于其机构类别中的其他组织（例如，一个公司与另一个公司），或在其主题领域中的其他类别组织（例如，潜在的盟友或敌人）的映射，可以被组织用来评估他们可能需要加强声誉的地方。鉴于民主中不信任的价值取决于公民对制度的充分了解，这张地图如果张贴在可公开访问的论坛（在线或离线）上，可以帮助公民评估他们必须与之打交道的组织，提高个人效率，并（潜在地）提高机构对公民要求的反应能力。