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Takada M, Murakami M, Ohnuma S, Shibata Y, Yasutaka T. Public Attitudes toward the Final Disposal of Radioactively Contaminated Soil Resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Accident. Environ Manage 2024; 73:962-972. [PMID: 38305854 PMCID: PMC11023960 DOI: 10.1007/s00267-024-01938-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2023] [Accepted: 01/13/2024] [Indexed: 02/03/2024]
Abstract
Radioactively contaminated soil from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station accident in 2011 is required by law to be finally disposed of outside Fukushima Prefecture by 2045. To gain public acceptance of this policy, it is essential to promote understanding and nationwide discussion. We conducted a web-based survey of 2000 people in Japan to examine public attitudes toward final disposal of the contaminated soil outside Fukushima Prefecture. Results show that policy approval was negatively correlated with perceived risk of a final disposal site, sense of inequity associated with building a final disposal site near residential areas, and values that are absolutely non-negotiable or protected from trade-offs with other values (protected values). Policy approval was positively correlated with high levels of interest in the Fukushima accident and subjective knowledge of decontamination and the policy. Respondents' comments and opinions about the policy indicated that respondents who approved of the policy accepted burden sharing, while those who disapproved were unconvinced by the rationale behind disposal outside Fukushima Prefecture and were dissatisfied by the lack of information disclosure and transparency. While the government's efforts to disseminate information about the current status and future of Fukushima have been effective to a certain extent, they are insufficient to achieve widespread public understanding of the policy. Our results indicate that attention needs to be paid to procedural fairness and explanations of risks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Momo Takada
- Institute for Geo-Resources and Environment, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
| | - Michio Murakami
- Center for Infectious Disease Education and Research, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan
| | - Susumu Ohnuma
- Department of Behavioral Science, Faculty of Humanity and Human Sciences / Center for Experimental Research in Social Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
| | - Yukihide Shibata
- Faculty of Humanity and Human Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
| | - Tetsuo Yasutaka
- Institute for Geo-Resources and Environment, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
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Ueltzhöffer K, Roth C, Neukel C, Bertsch K, Nüssel F, Herpertz SC. Do I care for you or for me? Processing of protected and non-protected moral values in subjects with extreme scores on the Dark Triad. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 2022; 273:367-377. [PMID: 36208316 PMCID: PMC9547089 DOI: 10.1007/s00406-022-01489-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/02/2022] [Accepted: 08/29/2022] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
Abstract
Protected moral values facilitate empathic concern for others, who are exposed to an existential threat, so that one spontaneously helps without taking into account utilitarian cost-benefit considerations. Subjects scoring high on the "Dark Triad" machiavellism, psychopathy, and narcissism are prone to ignore such appeals for selfless help. Until now, data on moral processing and moral decision-making following requests for altruistic help, which directly contrast appeals to protected and non-protected values in subjects with high and low scores on Dark Triad traits, have been missing. In this pilot study 25 healthy subjects with high and 27 with low Dark Triad scores participated in this functional magnetic resonance imaging study. We used a script-driven imagery paradigm to directly contrast requests for selfless help appealing to protected versus non-protected, negotiable moral values. Appeals to protected versus non-protected moral values elicited stronger activations in a large network including insula, amygdala, supramarginal gyrus, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Non-protected values evoked stronger activation in superior frontal sulcus, occipito-temporal junction, and posterior cingulate cortex. During decision-making, high-scorers on the Dark Triad showed increased activations in the superior parietal lobule, precuneus, and intraparietal sulcus. Behaviorally, protected versus non-protected values strongly reduced the reliance on personal cost-benefit calculations in low-scorers, while high-scorers continued to rely on utilitarian deliberations. Data suggest that appeals to protected versus non-protected values activate distinct brain regions associated with strong moral emotions, other-directed cognition, and rule-based decision-making processes. High-scorers display an increased reliance on cost-benefit calculations, which persists even when protected values are threatened.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kai Ueltzhöffer
- grid.7700.00000 0001 2190 4373Department of General Psychiatry, Center for Psychosocial Medicine, Heidelberg University, Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany ,grid.83440.3b0000000121901201The Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, London, WC1N 3AR UK
| | - Corinna Roth
- grid.7700.00000 0001 2190 4373Department of General Psychiatry, Center for Psychosocial Medicine, Heidelberg University, Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Corinne Neukel
- grid.7700.00000 0001 2190 4373Department of General Psychiatry, Center for Psychosocial Medicine, Heidelberg University, Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Katja Bertsch
- grid.7700.00000 0001 2190 4373Department of General Psychiatry, Center for Psychosocial Medicine, Heidelberg University, Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany ,grid.5252.00000 0004 1936 973XInstitute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, LMU München, 80802 Munich, Germany
| | - Friederike Nüssel
- grid.7700.00000 0001 2190 4373German Cancer Center, Heidelberg University, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Sabine C. Herpertz
- grid.7700.00000 0001 2190 4373Department of General Psychiatry, Center for Psychosocial Medicine, Heidelberg University, Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany
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Abstract
Approaching issues through the lens of nonnegotiable values increases the perceived intractability of debate (Baron & Spranca in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70, 1-16, 1997), while focusing on the concrete consequences of policies instead results in the moderation of extreme opinions (Fernbach, Rogers, Fox, & Sloman in Psychological Science, 24, 939-946, 2013) and a greater likelihood of conflict resolution (Baron & Leshner in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 6, 183-194, 2000). Using comments on the popular social media platform Reddit from January 2006 until September 2017, we showed how changes in the framing of same-sex marriage in public discourse relate to changes in public opinion. We used a topic model to show that the contributions of certain protected-values-based topics to the debate (religious arguments and freedom of opinion) increased prior to the emergence of a public consensus in support of same-sex marriage (Gallup, 2017), and declined afterward. In contrast, the discussion of certain consequentialist topics (the impact of politicians' stance and same-sex marriage as a matter of policy) showed the opposite pattern. Our results reinforce the meaningfulness of protected values and consequentialism as relevant dimensions for describing public discourse and highlight the usefulness of unsupervised machine-learning methods in tackling questions about social attitude change.
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