Translating Drinking and Driving Risk Information into Risk Perception

描述(由申请人提供)：认知科学的最新发展为研究人员提供了新的机会来解释危险行为(如饮酒和驾驶)并确定导致行为变化的机制。这一点很重要，因为几乎没有证据表明，常用的干预策略-公共信息和教育-单独有效地降低了风险，特别是当受众认为继续这种危险行为有好处的时候。公共信息往往不能改变人们的行为，因为风险信息无法转化为主观的风险感知。这种翻译的一个可能障碍是，说教信息在外显水平上影响认知，而行为选择在内隐水平上受到认知的严重影响。第二个可能的障碍是，在某些活体动机条件下，风险信息的接受者进行认知反应，以减轻风险信息的影响。 第三个可能的障碍是信息未能引起情感反应，也就是说，它们可能无法让收件人感到处于危险之中。最后，关于高风险饮酒，研究发现，饮酒会影响人们在做出判断和决策时所注意的信息。因此，饮酒行为可能会阻碍在决定是否酒后驾车时使用风险信息。这份申请描述了一系列雄心勃勃的研究。这项研究首先将证明，对受试者目标(表现为内隐认知结构)的微妙操纵可以暂时改变对酒精的态度和自我报告的酒后驾车意图。其次，研究将表明，饮酒(通过酒精近视现象)会加剧认知操纵的效果。因此，巧妙地启动安全目标应该会减少酒后驾车的意图，特别是对于已经饮酒的个人。第三，研究将表明，通过隐性方法(相对于显性方法)传达风险信息可以规避人们用来抵制说服性影响的认知反应策略。最后，研究将证明，当参与者被错误地将情绪反应归因于消息信息时，风险信息的影响显著更大。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent developments in cognitive science present researchers with new opportunities for explaining risky behavior (such as drinking and driving) and identifying mechanisms for engendering behavioral change. This is important as there is little evidence to suggest that commonly used intervention strategies-public information and education-alone effectively reduce risk, particularly when audiences perceive benefits to continuing the risky behavior. Public information may often fall short in changing behavior because the risk information fails to translate into subjective risk perception. One possible impediment to this translation is that didactic information affects cognition at the explicit level whereas behavioral choice is heavily influenced by cognition operating on the implicit level. A second possible impediment is that under certain in vivo motivational conditions, recipients of risk information engage in cognitive responding to mitigate the influence of that risk information. A third possible impediment is messages that fail to engage affective responses, that is, they may fail to make recipients feel at risk. Finally, regarding risky drinking specifically, alcohol consumption has been found to influence what information people attend to in forming judgments and making decisions. Thus, the act of drinking might impede the use of risk information in deciding whether to drink and drive. This application describes an ambitious series of studies. The research first will demonstrate that the subtle manipulation of subjects' goals (represented as implicit cognitive structures) can temporarily alter attitudes towards alcohol and self-reported drinking-and-driving intentions. Second, the research will show that alcohol consumption (via the phenomenon of alcohol myopia) exacerbates the effect of cognitive manipulation. Thus, subtly priming the goal of safety should reduce drinking-and-driving intentions, particularly for individuals who have been dosed with alcohol. Third, the research will show that communicating risk information through implicit methods (versus explicit methods) circumvents cognitive response strategies that people use to resist persuasive influence. Finally, the research will demonstrate that the impact of risk information is significanly greater when participants are led to misattribute emotional responses to the message information.