Social Trust, Narrative and Risk Management

人们普遍认为社会信任对改善这个国家的风险管理很重要。然而，直到最近，社会信任理论的发展和检验才受到重视。这些研究者已经发展出一种有用的社会信任理论的雏形，用以指导研究工作。该理论基于文化取向或叙事的概念：储存在长期记忆中的认知表征。在其众多功能中，叙事引导个体的思想、情感和行为。这个项目旨在调查个人在思考风险管理问题和做出社会信任判断时使用的叙述。调查人员不仅对叙述的内容感兴趣，而且对叙述的使用方式也感兴趣。先前的研究表明，不同类型的社会信任可能加剧或改善群体间冲突。本项目包括两组与实验组和一组与对照组的访谈。这些研究旨在识别和探索可能符合不同价值取向和社会信任类型的系统性有意识或无意识的思维和判断变化。对风险管理的思考和对社会信任的判断将在与专业人员、非专业人员和学生的两组访谈中进行探讨。控制组访谈将允许调查人员测试实验程序本身是否影响受试者的判断。结果将发表在期刊和书籍上。本研究中描述的任务旨在加深我们对人们如何看待风险管理和社会信任的理解，这是风险管理研究中被忽视的领域。例如，理论表明，社会信任叙事可能经常在个人意识之外运作。如果这些研究为这种对社会信任的理解提供支持，它们将对风险管理和风险沟通实践产生基本的影响。

There is general agreement about the importance of social trust in improving risk management in this country. However, until recently, little attention was paid to the development and testing of social trust theory. These investigators have developed the beginnings of a useful social trust theory to guide research work. The theory is based on the concept of cultural orientations or narratives: cognitive representations stored in long-term memory. Among their many functions, narratives guide the thought, affect and behavior of individuals. This project is designed to investigate the narratives that individuals use in thinking about risk management issues and in making judgments of social trust. The investigators are interested not only in the content of the narratives but also in how they are used. Prior work indicates that different kinds of social trust may exacerbate or ameliorate inter-group conflict. This project consists of two sets of interviews with experimental groups of subjects and one with a control group. The studies are designed to identify and explore systematic conscious or unconscious variations in thinking and judgment that may accord with different value orientations and kinds of social trust. Thinking about risk management and making judgments of social trust will be explored in two sets of interviews with professional and lay and student subjects. Control group interviews will allow the investigators to test whether the experimental procedures themselves affected subjects' judgments. Results will be published in journals and books. The tasks described in this research are designed to deepen our understanding of how people think about risk management and social trust, a neglected area of risk management research. Theory suggests, for example, that social trust narratives may frequently operate outside the awareness of individuals. Should these studies provide support for this understanding of social trust, they would have basic implications for risk management and risk communication practice.