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- Title
The affect heuristic, mortality salience, and risk: Domain-specific effects of a natural disaster on risk-benefit perception.
- Authors
Västfjäll, Daniel; Peters, Ellen; Slovic, Paul
- Abstract
We examine how affect and accessible thoughts following a major natural disaster influence everyday risk perception. A survey was conducted in the months following the 2004 south Asian Tsunami in a representative sample of the Swedish population ( N = 733). Respondents rated their experienced affect as well as the perceived risk and benefits of various everyday decision domains. Affect influenced risk and benefit perception in a way that could be predicted from both the affect-congruency and affect heuristic literatures (increased risk perception and stronger risk-benefit correlations). However, in some decision domains, self-regulation goals primed by the natural disaster predicted risk and benefit ratings. Together, these results show that affect, accessible thoughts and motivational states influence perceptions of risks and benefits.
- Subjects
ASIA; SWEDEN; NATURAL disasters &; psychology; AFFECT (Psychology); ATTITUDE (Psychology); DECISION making; QUESTIONNAIRES; RESEARCH funding; RISK perception; ATTITUDES toward death; DESCRIPTIVE statistics
- Publication
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 2014, Vol 55, Issue 6, p527
- ISSN
0036-5564
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/sjop.12166