Extreme Weather Events and Individual differences in Threat Perception and Behavior

个人以不同的方式解读风险信息：一些人低估了风险，而另一些人则高估了风险--这些对这样或那样的错误的偏好可能取决于可识别的个人差异。在极端天气事件(如龙卷风、飓风)的背景下，这两个错误都是有问题的。如果灾难来袭，准备不足的人会将自己置于危险之中，而准备过度的人可能会囤积物资，耗尽资源，或者为一场不太可能的灾难而疏散，从而堵塞疏散路线。了解个性特征(如冲动、尽责)和社交网络(如朋友、家人、同事)的个体差异如何影响人们对风险的理解，可能对传达有效的警告和潜在地拯救生命至关重要。该奖项将支持一系列四项研究，这些研究考察了个性特征、社交网络以及可用的时间和资源等各种因素如何影响人们的风险偏好以及关于风暴准备和疏散意图的决定。这个跨学科的研究项目借鉴了决策科学、人格心理学和社会网络分析，将为人们在面对危险天气事件时如何做出准备和疏散的关键决策提供一个综合的视角。这项研究还将为初级研究人员提供网络分析和统计建模方面的高级培训机会。在了解到飓风等即将到来的自然灾害后，人们会权衡潜在的误报和漏报错误的成本。人们可能会面临假阳性错误，在这种错误中，他们支付了准备费用，但灾难没有发生，或者他们可能面临假阴性错误，在错误错误中，他们什么都不做，但如果灾难发生，他们可能会冒着付出严重代价的风险。这两种决定的成本可能截然不同，从不便到生命损失。目前关于灾害相关决策的研究缺乏对影响人们如何权衡这些潜在结果的个人和社会因素的全面了解。为此，研究项目将采取多种方法，使用(A)心理学方法评估个人和环境的影响，(B)以自我为中心的社会网络分析，评估人们的个人网络组成和结构的影响。这个项目解决了三个具体的问题：(1)特征和环境因素是否影响人们对自然灾害的认知？(2)这些个体差异是否通过人们对假阳性或假阴性错误的不同权重来调节对危险相关认知的影响？(3)将危险视为与从事更高风险的危险相关行为相关的机会，这种对自然灾害的认知是否改变了人们的行为？这些发现有望有助于我们理解个人和环境因素影响人们对风险的解释以及他们的意图和行为的机制。对于计划疏散后勤并决定何时发布警告的官员来说，了解人们如何感知他们收到的风险信息是关键。

Individuals interpret risk information in different ways: some underestimate risk while others overestimate it--and these preferences for one error or another may depend on identifiable individual differences. In the context of extreme weather events (e.g., tornadoes, hurricanes), both of these errors are problematic. Under-preparers put themselves at risk if a disaster strikes, whereas over-preparers may hoard supplies, deplete resources, or evacuate for an unlikely disaster and thus clog evacuation routes. Understanding how individual differences in personality traits (e.g., impulsivity, conscientiousness) and social networks (e.g., friends, family, coworkers) influence people's interpretations of risk may be essential to communicating effective warnings and potentially saving lives. This award will support a series of four studies that examine how various factors such as personality traits, social networks, and available time and resources affect people's risk preferences and decisions about storm preparation and intentions to evacuate. This interdisciplinary research project, which draws on decision science, personality psychology, and social network analysis, will provide an integrative view of how people make key decisions about preparation and evacuation in the face of threatening weather events. This research will also provide advanced training opportunities in network analysis and statistical modeling for junior researchers.After learning about an approaching natural disaster such as a hurricane, people weigh the costs of potential false positive and false negative errors. People may face a false positive error in which they pay the costs to prepare yet the disaster does not occur, or they may face a false negative error in which they do nothing yet risk paying severe costs if the disaster occurs. The costs of both types of decisions can differ radically, from inconvenience to loss of life. Current research on disaster-related decision-making lacks a comprehensive understanding of the individual and social factors that influence how people weigh these potential outcomes. To this end, the research project will take a multi-method approach using (a) psychological methods for assessing personal and environmental influences, (b) egocentric social network analysis for assessing the influences of people's personal network composition and structure. This project addresses three specific questions: (1) Do trait and environmental factors influence people's cognition about natural hazards? (2) Is the influence of these individual differences on hazard-related cognition mediated by the differential weights people assign to false positive or false negative errors? (3) Is seeing a hazard as an opportunity related to engaging in more risky hazard-related behaviors, and does this cognition about a natural hazard change how people behave? The findings are expected to contribute to our understanding of the mechanism by which individual and environmental factors influence people's interpretation of risk as well as their intentions and behaviors. Understanding how people perceive the risk information they receive is key for officials who plan evacuation logistics and decide when to issue warnings.