Joint Influences on Perceived Vulnerability and Behavior

人们经常遇到这样的情况，他们必须决定如何应对潜在的危险或健康威胁（例如，龙卷风警报、流感病毒、未煮熟的食物、石棉、运动损伤、黑暗的小巷、香烟烟雾、阳光暴晒、结冰的道路、斗牛犬）。一个人吗?美国对危险或威胁的反应，除其他外，应取决于造成伤害的可能性。例如，一个人因为可能造成的伤害微乎其微而停止或避免想要的活动是愚蠢的，而继续进行一项极有可能造成严重伤害的活动则是不明智的。因此，了解是什么塑造了人是至关重要的。对脆弱性的感知（即，威胁造成伤害的主观可能性）以及这些感知如何影响行为。这是一个复杂的挑战，因为对于任何给定的威胁，都有各种各样的信息可能影响感知到的脆弱性。为了说明这一点，假设一个人正准备走在森林小径上，他正在考虑携带西尼罗河病毒的蚊子的威胁。对西尼罗河病毒易感程度的认知可能受到以下因素的影响：过去徒步旅行中被叮咬的频率、这条路线在多大程度上代表了吸引蚊子的类型、报纸上关于西尼罗河病毒感染率的报道，以及其他徒步旅行者是否似乎对这种病毒感到担忧。该项目的一个关键目标是完善和测试一种新的理论，即各种因素如何共同塑造对脆弱性和行为的看法。与现有的理论不同，这一理论明确地表达了导致脆弱性的六个因素，并对人与人之间的差异做出了重要区分。对驱动行为的判断可能性和脆弱性感知的明确报告。该项目的第二个相关目标是开发一种灵活的基于计算机的范例，可被广泛的研究人员用于实验测试各种联合操作因素如何在潜在威胁存在时影响决策和行为。该项目的理论和实证研究结果应该对涉及不确定性下的主观威胁评估和/或决策制定的各个领域具有重要意义。这包括健康心理学、职业安全/伤害预防和决策等领域。这些研究还应该提供关于如何最好地衡量人的见解。美国人对健康风险的感知脆弱性，以及如何设计公共？旨在使人们认识到自身脆弱性的保健干预措施。

People routinely encounter situations in which they must decide how to respond to a potential danger or health threat (e.g., tornado siren, flu virus, undercooked food, asbestos, sports injury, a dark alley, cigarette smoke, sun exposure, an icy road, a pit bull). A person?s response to a danger or threat should depend on, among other things, the likelihood of harm. For example, a person would be foolish to stop or avoid a desired activity because of a negligible likelihood of harm, yet would be ill-advised to continue with an activity associated with a high likelihood of serious harm. Consequently, it is crucial to understand what shapes people?s perceptions of vulnerability (i.e., subjective likelihood of harm from a threat) and how these perceptions influence behavior. This is a complex challenge because for any given threat, there is a variety of information that could influence perceived vulnerability. To illustrate, consider a person who is about to walk on a forest trail and is thinking about the threat of mosquitoes carrying West Nile Virus. Perceived vulnerability to West Nile might be affected by knowledge of the frequencies of getting bites on past walks, the extent to which the trail seems representative of the type that attracts mosquitoes, a newspaper story about the rates of West Nile Virus, and whether other hikers seem to be concerned about the virus.A key goal for this project is to refine and test a new theory of how various factors jointly shape perceptions of vulnerability and behavior. Unlike existing theories, this one is explicit in representing six factors that drive vulnerability and also makes an important distinction between people?s explicit reports of judged likelihood and the perceptions of vulnerability that drive behavior. An interrelated second goal of the project is to develop a flexible computer-based paradigm that can be used by a broad array of researchers for experimentally testing how various jointly operating factors influence decisions and behavior in the presence of a potential threat. The theory and empirical findings from this project should have important implications across fields concerned with subjective threat assessment and/or decision making under uncertainty. This includes fields like health psychology, occupational safety/injury prevention, and decision making. The studies should also provide insight about how to best measure people?s perceived vulnerability to health risks, as well as how to design public?health interventions aimed at making people aware of their vulnerability.