The Cultural Cognition of Risk: Psychological and Social Mechanisms

“对风险的文化认知”指的是个体将其对风险程度的信念与其基于文化基础的对假定危险活动的道德评价相一致的倾向。在之前的一项研究中，研究人员对全国大样本(N=1800)进行了调查，以评估这一现象。他们发现，关于无数风险的信念--涉及气候变化、持有枪支、吸毒和各种医疗程序等--以文化认知最好的解释模式分布在不同的人之间。但是，尽管这项研究提供了强有力的证据，表明文化承诺确实会塑造风险认知，但该研究并没有准确地确定文化为什么或如何施加这种影响。这就是当前研究的目标。利用创新的在线测试方法，研究人员将进行一系列实验，旨在揭示文化认知运行的社会和心理机制。他们的主要假设之一是，个人对预示着对其文化身份核心活动的干扰的信息存在情感阻力。另一个原因是，相比那些似乎持有相互竞争的文化取向的人，个人将更大的可信度归因于那些似乎拥有相同文化取向的风险传播者。预期这一试验项目的结果不仅将加深对风险观念如何形成的科学理解，而且还将产生对不同文化取向的人如何就适当的风险缓解政策达成一致的实际见解。

The "cultural cognition of risk" refers to the tendency of individuals to conform their beliefs about the magnitude of risks to their culturally grounded moral appraisals of putatively dangerous activities. In a previous study the investigators surveyed a large national sample (N = 1,800) to assess this phenomenon. They found that beliefs about myriad risks--ones involving climate change, firearm possession, drug use, and various medical procedures, among others--are distributed across persons in patterns best explained by cultural cognition. But while this study furnished strong evidence that cultural commitments do indeed shape risk perceptions, the study did not identify precisely why or how culture exerts this influence. That is the objective of the current study. Using innovative on-line testing methods, the investigators will carry out a series of experiments aimed at uncovering the social and psychological mechanisms through which cultural cognition operates. Among their principal hypotheses is that individuals experience emotional resistance to information that portends interference with activities central to their cultural identities. Another is that individuals impute greater credibility to risk communicators who appear to share their cultural orientations than to those who appear to harbor competing ones. It is expected that the results of the this experimental project will not only deepen scientific understanding of how risk perceptions are formed, but also generate practical insights into how persons of diverse cultural orientations can reach agreement on appropriate policies of risk mitigation.