Language modality influences risk perception: Innovations read well but sound even better

Psychological theories implicitly assume that the modality in which information is conveyed-spoken or written-leaves judgment and choice unaltered. Modality is rarely considered in textbooks on judgment and decision making, and the selection of modality in research is often based on convenience. We challenge this theoretical assumption. Three experiments (N = 984) show that the modality in which novel technologies are described systematically influences their perceived risk and benefit. Participants either read or heard advantages and disadvantages of novel technologies and then assessed their risk and benefit. In Study 1, spoken descriptions prompted more positive evaluations toward the technologies in terms of overall risks and benefits than written descriptions. Studies 2 and 3 replicated this modality effect and demonstrated that affect partially explains it, as spoken descriptions induced more positive feelings toward the new technologies than written descriptions. Study 3 (preregistered) showed that the influence of modality is unique to novel technologies and does not extend to familiar ones. These findings contribute theoretically to the understanding of the relationship between language and thought, and carry implications for survey research and the use of voice assistant technology.

Self-imposed social isolation among clients of social care organisations in the COVID-19 pandemic

Although self-imposed social isolation is an important way of reducing the risk of COVID-19 infection, previous research indicates that this behaviour varies substantially between different groups and individuals. Socially marginalized people are generally less involved in protective health behaviours, but there are few studies of their COVID-19 protective behaviours. The aims of the paper are therefore to: 1) compare self-imposed social isolation to avoid COVID-19 among socially marginalized groups, and to 2) examine factors influencing this, focusing especially on the role of social capital, risk awareness and sources of information about COVID-19. The study is based on survey data (N = 173) from people who are clients of social care organisations in Estonia, Norway, Hungary and Portugal. The sample involves clients living: a) in their homes, b) in facilities, and c) on the street or under temporary arrangements. Results indicate that the level of social isolation among the marginalized groups is comparable to that of the general population in previous studies. As hypothesized, we find that respondents living on the street or under temporary arrangements engage in less self-imposed social isolation than e.g. the respondents living in their homes. We also find lower levels of risk awareness, social capital and trust in authorities' information about COVID-19 among people living on the street or under temporary arrangements. Only linking social capital and trust in authorities' information was significantly related to respondents' social isolation, and not worry for COVID-19 infection. Thus, it seems that respondents largely self-isolated because of "duty" and not worry for infection.

Hypoxia and risk preferences: Mild hypoxia impacts choices for low-probability high-payoff bets

Mild degrees of hypoxia are known to exert a detrimental effect on cognitive functions. In a lab study, we assessed the effect of mild hypoxia on risk-taking behavior. Participants (N = 25) were presented with pairs of bets of equal expected monetary value, one having a higher probability of winning/losing a lower payoff (safer bet) and one having a lower probability of winning/losing a higher payoff (riskier bet). We systematically varied the ratio of the probabilities (and corresponding payoffs) of the two bets and examined how this affected participants’ choice between them. Following a familiarization session, participants performed the task twice: once in a normoxic environment (20.9% oxygen concentration) and once in a mildly hypoxic environment (14.1% oxygen concentration). Participants were not told and could not guess which environment they were in. We found a higher preference for the riskier bet in the mild hypoxic than normoxic environment but only in the loss domain. Furthermore, as the probability ratio increased, mild hypoxia increased the preference for the riskier bet in the domain of losses but decreased it for gains. The present findings support that mild hypoxia promotes riskier choices in the loss domain and provide new insights into the impact of mild hypoxia in moderating the effect of probability ratio on risky choices.

Approaches to 'vulnerability' in eight European disaster management systems

While social vulnerability in the face of disasters has received increasing academic attention, relatively little is known about the extent to which that knowledge is reflected in practice by institutions involved in disaster management. This study charts the practitioners' approaches to disaster vulnerability in eight European countries: Belgium; Estonia; Finland; Germany; Hungary; Italy; Norway; and Sweden. It draws on a comparative document analysis and 95 interviews with disaster managers and reveals significant differences across countries in terms of the ontology of vulnerability, its sources, reduction strategies, and the allocation of related duties. To advance the debate and provide conceptual clarity, we put forward a heuristic model to facilitate different understandings of vulnerability along the dimensions of human agency and technological structures as well as social support through private relations and state actors. This could guide risk analysis of and planning for major hazards and could be adapted further to particular types of disasters.

Risk perceptions and COVID-19 protective behaviors: A two-wave longitudinal study of epidemic and post-epidemic periods

We investigated how perceived risk and protective behaviors changed as the coronavirus epidemic progressed. A longitudinal sample of 538 people responded to a COVID-19 risk perception questionnaire during the outbreak and post-epidemic periods. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), we examined the mean level change of selected constructs and differences in their relationships. We tested a risk perception pathway in which affective attitude, informed by experience, shaped risk perceptions and protective behaviors. The model also postulated a social pathway in which cultural worldviews, like individualism and hierarchy, predicted risk perceptions and protective behaviors through social norms. Latent mean difference analyses revealed a decrease in social distancing behaviors and an increase in hygiene-cleanliness, corresponding to a reduction in risk perceptions and social norms and a rise in direct and indirect experience, while affective attitude remained substantially stable. Cross-sectional and longitudinal path analyses showed that affective risk perception, primarily informed by affective attitude, and social norms promoted behavior consistency regardless of epidemic contingencies. Instead, analytic risk perceptions were linked to protective behaviors only during the outbreak. Although risk perceptions dropped over time, analytic risk perceptions dropped more steeply than affective risk perceptions. Our findings supported the distinction between affective and deliberative processes in risk perception, reinforcing the view that affective reactions are needed to deploy analytic processes. Our study also supports the claim that perceived social norms are essential to understanding cultural worldview-related protective behaviors variability.

Risk Perception and Protective Behaviors During the Rise of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Italy

Risk perception is important in determining health-protective behavior. During the rise of the COVID-19 epidemic, we tested a comprehensive structural equation model of risk perception to explain adherence to protective behaviors in a crisis context using a survey of 572 Italian citizens. We identified two categories of protective behaviors, labeled promoting hygiene and cleaning, and avoiding social closeness. Social norms and risk perceptions were the more proximal antecedents of both categories. Cultural worldviews, affect, and experience of COVID-19 were the more distal predictors. Promoting hygiene and cleaning was triggered by the negative affective attitude toward coronavirus and mediated by an affective appraisal of risk. The deliberate dimension of risk perception (perceived likelihood) predicted only avoiding social closeness. Social norms predicted both types of behaviors and mediated the relations of cultural worldviews. Individualism (vs. communitarianism), more than hierarchy (vs. egalitarianism), shaped the affective evaluation of coronavirus. The model was an acceptable fit to the data and accounted for 20% and 29% of the variance in promoting hygiene and cleaning, and avoiding social closeness, respectively. The findings were robust to the effect of sociodemographic factors (age, gender, education, socioeconomic status, and zone of the country). Taken together, our findings confirmed the empirical distinction between affective and deliberate processes in risk perception, supported the validity of the affect heuristic, and highlighted the role of social norms as an account for why individualistic people were less likely to follow the prescribed health-protective behaviors. Implications for risk communication are discussed.

Decision making under stress: mild hypoxia leads to increased risk-taking

People tend to take more risks under stressful conditions. In the present study, we examined the effect of mild hypoxia, an unconscious and ongoing stressor, on decisions under uncertainty where probabilities are unknown. Participants completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Taking task (BART) in both a normoxic (20.9% oxygen concentration) and a mildly hypoxic (14.1% oxygen concentration) environment. The results indicate that people take more risks in a mildly hypoxic than in a normoxic environment. Despite inducing significant changes in physiological parameters, the oxygen manipulation remained undetected by participants allowing us to rule out a cognitive appraisal account for the effect. Moreover, the stressor was ongoing allowing us to discount possible post-stress reaction explanations. The current findings extend previous ones about the effect of stress on risk-taking and demonstrate that undetected stressors can increase risk-taking in decision making under ambiguity.

Assessing the effect of containment measures on the spatio-temporal dynamic of COVID-19 in Italy

This paper aims at investigating empirically whether and to what extent the containment measures adopted in Italy had an impact in reducing the diffusion of the COVID-19 disease across provinces. For this purpose, we extend the multivariate time-series model for infection counts proposed in Paul and Held (Stat Med 30(10):118-1136, 2011) by augmenting the model specification with B-spline regressors in order to account for complex nonlinear spatio-temporal dynamics in the propagation of the disease. The results of the model estimated on the time series of the number of infections for the Italian provinces show that the containment measures, despite being globally effective in reducing both the spread of contagion and its self-sustaining dynamics, have had nonlinear impacts across provinces. The impact has been relatively stronger in the northern local areas, where the disease occurred earlier and with a greater incidence. This evidence may be explained by the shared popular belief that the contagion was not a close-to-home problem but rather restricted to a few distant northern areas, which, in turn, might have led individuals to adhere less strictly to containment measures and lockdown rules.

Fostering the Understanding of Positive Test Results

Background

The majority of health-service users seem unable to properly compute the positive predictive value of medical tests. The research reported in the present study sought to investigate whether, and to what extent, probabilistic inferences about a positive test result can be improved by changing the traditional way in which probability judgments are elicited and medical information is presented.

Methods

Online survey respondents were presented with a positive test result regarding a pregnant woman, and had to estimate the chances that her unborn baby had an anomaly (standard judgment), to apportion the numbers of chances for and against this hypothesis (distributive judgment), and to indicate whether the hypothesis that the baby had an anomaly was more or less likely than its alternative (relative judgment). Test sensitivity and information framing were also manipulated.

Results

Irrespective of education and to some extent of numeracy, the majority of respondents produced correct distributive assessments of chances, which were in line with relative judgments and more accurate than standard ones. When information displayed exclusively positive test results, inferences resulted further improved and unaffected by test sensitivity.

Conclusions

Simple communication strategies that prompt extensional reasoning on the relevant set of number of chances can help individuals to overcome probabilistic inference errors.

Reduced Risk-Taking After Prior Losses in Pathological Gamblers Under Treatment and Healthy Control Group but not in Problem Gamblers

A group of pathological gamblers and a group of problem gamblers (i.e., gamblers at risk of becoming pathological) were compared to healthy controls on their risk-taking propensity after prior losses. Each participant played both the Balloon Analogue Risk Taking task (BART) and a modified version of the same task, where individuals face five repeated predetermined early losses at the onset of the game. No significant difference in risk-taking was found between groups on the standard BART task, while significant differences emerged when comparing behaviors in the two tasks: both pathological gamblers and controls reduced their risk-taking tendency after prior losses in the modified BART compared to the standard BART, whereas problem gamblers showed no reduction in risk-taking after prior losses. We interpret these results as a sign of a reduced sensitivity to negative feedback in problem gamblers which might contribute to explain their loss-chasing tendency.

Positive Arousal Increases Individuals' Preferences for Risk

Much is known about the effect of negative arousal on decision making, but little is known about the effect of positive arousal. In this study, we manipulated positive arousal and measured individual choices under risk using an incentivized task. Participants were randomly assigned to either a low arousal or a high arousal condition and asked to choose between pairs of two-outcome monetary lotteries with the same expected value but different risk in terms of outcome variance. The probability was set at 50% for each lottery. Participants in the high arousal group selected the riskier lottery more often and took more time to make choices than participants in the low arousal group. This finding shows that introducing a pleasant arousing cue as part of the decision context shifts an individual’s preferences toward the risky economic option and away from the safer one.

Unraveling the organizational mechanism at the root of safety compliance in an Italian manufacturing firm

Safety performance is recognized as the more proximal and effective precursor of safety outcomes. In particular, safety compliance significantly reduces workplace accidents and injuries. However, it is not entirely clear what role organizational factors play in determining workers' safety. The present study contributes to defining which organizational factors increase safety compliance by testing a mediational model in which supervisor support is related to safety climate, which in turn is related to organizational identification that finally is related to safety compliance. We tested our hypotheses in a sample of 186 production workers of an Italian manufacturing firm using a cross-sectional design. Findings confirm our hypotheses. Management should consider these organizational factors in order to implement primary prevention practices against work accidents.

Factors that May Affect the Difficulty of Uncovering Hidden Profiles

Three experiments examined three factors that may impede the discovery of hidden profiles: commitment to initial decision, reiteration effect, and ownership bias. Experiment 1 examined whether groups in which members are not asked to make an initial decision before group discussion are more likely to uncover hidden profiles than groups in which members are asked to make an initial decision. Experiment 2 examined this commitment to an initial decision and also the repetition of information for individuals. Experiment 3 explored the reiteration effect in groups and examined whether information that is usually repeated more in groups is viewed as more truthful. Experiments 1 and 2 found no support for the commitment to initial decision hypothesis for uncovering hidden profiles. Experiment 2 found that repetition of `common'information significantly reduced individuals' ability to uncover hidden profiles. Experiment 3 found that information individuals owned (both common and unique) before discussion was rated as more valid than other information. Experiment 3 did not find that common information, which is generally repeated more, was rated as more valid than unique information. Limitations of the current studies and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Natural Frequencies Do Not Foster Public Understanding of Medical Test Results

Major organizations recommend presenting medical test results in terms of natural frequencies, rather than single-event probabilities. The evidence, however, is that natural frequency presentations benefit at most one-fifth of samples of health service users and patients. Only one study reported a substantial benefit of these presentations. Here, we replicate that study, testing online survey respondents. Study 1 attributed the previously reported benefit of natural frequencies to a scoring artifact. Study 2 showed that natural frequencies may elicit evaluations that conflict with the normatively correct one, potentially hindering informed decision making. Ironically, these evaluations occurred less often when respondents reasoned about single-event probabilities. These results suggest caution in promoting natural frequencies as the best way to communicate medical test data to health service users and patients.

The affect heuristic in occupational safety

BACKGROUND

The affect heuristic is a rule of thumb according to which, in the process of making a judgment or decision, people use affect as a cue. If a stimulus elicits positive affect then risks associated to that stimulus are viewed as low and benefits as high; conversely, if the stimulus elicits negative affect, then risks are perceived as high and benefits as low.

OBJECTIVES

The basic tenet of this study is that affect heuristic guides worker's judgment and decision making in a risk situation. The more the worker likes her/his organization the less she/he will perceive the risks as high.

METHOD

A sample of 115 employers and 65 employees working in small family agricultural businesses completed a questionnaire measuring perceived safety costs, psychological safety climate, affective commitment and safety compliance.

RESULTS

A multi-sample structural analysis supported the thesis that safety compliance can be explained through an affect-based heuristic reasoning, but only for employers.

CONCLUSIONS

Positive affective commitment towards their family business reduced employers' compliance with safety procedures by increasing the perceived cost of implementing them.

Acute Exercise Increases Sex Differences in Amateur Athletes' Risk Taking

The research presented here investigates the interaction between acute exercise, biological sex and risk-taking behavior. The study involved 20 amateur athletes (19-33 years old), 10 males and 10 females, who were asked to undergo subsequent experimental sessions designed to compare their risky behaviors on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) 34 at rest and while exercising at moderate intensity (60% of their maximal aerobic power). Results showed that physical exercise affected male and female participants differently: Whereas males became more risk seeking, females became more risk averse during exercise.

Improving public interpretation of probabilistic test results: distributive evaluations

Health service users err in posttest probability evaluations. Here we document for the first time that users succeed when they reason about numbers of cases and make distributive evaluations. A sample of women interested in prenatal testing incorrectly evaluated the posttest probability that a given fetus had an anomaly, but regardless of their numeracy level, they correctly apportioned the cases for and against that hypothesis. This finding shows that health service users are not doomed to fail in dealing with single-case probabilities and suggests that probabilistic data can be used effectively for communicating test results.

Loss aversion and hypoxia: less loss aversion in oxygen-depleted environment

Hypoxia, the deprivation of adequate oxygen supply, constitutes a direct threat to survival by disrupting cardiovascular or respiratory homeostasis and eliciting a respiratory distress. Although hypoxia has been shown to increase brain vulnerability and impair basic cognitive functions, only one study has examined its effect on decision-making. The present study examined the effect of mild hypoxia on individual's loss aversion, that is, the tendency to be more affected by losses than equal sized gains. A sample of 26 participants were asked to either accept or reject a series of mixed gambles once in an oxygen-depleted environment (14.1% oxygen concentration) and once in a normoxic environment (20.9% oxygen concentration). Each gamble involved a 50-50 chance of winning or losing specified amounts of money. Mild hypoxia decreased loss aversion: on average in the normoxic condition participants accepted gambles if the gain was at least 2.4 times as large as the loss, whereas in the oxygen-depleted condition participants accepted gambles if the gain was at least 1.7 times as large as the loss. Mild hypoxia may push individuals to be less cautious in daily decisions that involve a trade-off between a gain and a loss.

Using Comparison Scenarios to Improve Prenatal Risk Communication

The present research provides empirical evidence of whether communicating the prenatal risk of chromosomal anomalies using comparison scenarios influences women’s ability to distinguish between different risk levels. In 2 experiments, participants read a description of a hypothetical woman who was learning of the risk of chromosomal anomaly as a result of a prenatal screening test. Both experiments used a 3 (risk level) × 3 (scenario) full between-subjects design. In accordance with the experimental condition, participants were presented with a low (e.g., 1 in 5390), a medium (e.g., 1 in 770), or a high risk value (e.g., 1 in 110). Such risk values were presented either on their own or along with additional information illustrating a comparison scenario that provided 2 numerical comparison points. Participants were asked to evaluate the risk of chromosomal anomaly. In Experiment 2, participants’ numeracy skills were also assessed. Results showed that the use of comparison scenarios results in significant differences in perceived risk across risk levels whereas such differences are not significant without the comparison scenario, but such a technique has differential effects according to participants’ capacity to deal with numbers. Although the technique is beneficial for high-numerate participants, it has no effect on low-numerate participants.

The 1-in-X effect on the subjective assessment of medical probabilities

Among numerical formats available to express probability, ratios are extensively used in risk communication, perhaps because of the health professional's intuitive sense of their clarity and simplicity. Moreover, health professionals, in the attempt to make the data more meaningful, tend to prefer proportions with a numerator of 1 and shifting denominators (e.g., 1 in 200) rather than equivalent rates of disease per unit of population exposed to the threat (e.g., 5 in 1000). However, in a series of 7 experiments, it is shown that individual subjective assessments of the same probability presented through proportions rather than rates vary significantly. A 1-in-X format (e.g., 1 in 200) is subjectively perceived as bigger and more alarming than an N-in-X*N format (e.g., 5 in 1000). The 1-in-X effect generalizes to different populations, probabilities, and medical conditions. Further-more, the effect is not attenuated by a communicative intervention (verbal analogy), but it disappears with an icon array visual aid.

Sociocognitive factors associated with nonadherence to medication after hospital discharge

Poor adherence to prescribed medication is a well-known problem and continues to be a major challenge in all medical specialties. Unlike previous studies that have mainly focused on nonadherence behaviors in specific diseases, this study sought to examine socio-cognitive factors associated with nonadherence behavior in a sample of a general clinical population. A questionnaire investigating socio-demographic and cognitive factors and a telephone follow-up interview were administered to 84 patients recruited in a General Medicine Unit before their discharge. Half of the participants were informed about that follow-up procedure. One month after hospital discharge, 42% of uninformed patients reported nonadherence behaviors, as against 21% of informed patients. Middle-aged patients and short-term treatments were associated significantly more often with nonadherence. Among cognitive factors, patients' perceived risks and benefits of nonadherence, personal susceptibility to diseases, subjective health value, and reported memory failures were significantly associated with adherence. We conclude that a patient's perception may be more important than medication load, illness severity, and complexity of regimen in influencing medication adherence, and that a telephone call follow-up helps in monitoring medication adherence after hospital discharge.

Mental Representation of Money in Experts and Nonexperts after the Introduction of the Euro

The aim of the present study is to show the representation of the category “money” that Italians have after the introduction of the Euro. In addition, it was assessed whether different expertise in handling money might have an effect. To assess the expertise we asked to answer three different groups (students, retailers, and bank clerks) to answer the questionnaire. It was expected that the mental representation of the concept of money should be different among the three groups since they have different ways of handling money depending on their specific activities. Results showed that different exemplars of money are actually perceived as differently representative of the concept money. Moreover, there was an effect of expertise, which led the three groups to have different mental representations of the money category.

Expert and public perception of risk from biotechnology

Risk perceptions of a series of biotechnology applications were examined in a public (nonexpert) sample and an expert sample. Compared with the experts, the public perceived all biotechnology applications as more risky. Both groups perceived food-related applications to be riskier than medical applications. Compared with the public, experts perceived both food and medical applications as less harmful and more useful. Experts also judged the risks posed from medical biotechnology applications as more familiar and acknowledged by people and science. Lay estimates of the risk of food applications were predicted by potential harm, potential benefits, science knowledge, and familiarity; experts' estimates were predicted only by harm and benefits. Lay estimates of the risk of medical applications were predicted by potential harm; experts' estimates were predicted by potential benefits, number and type of people exposed, and science knowledge. We discuss the implications of the results for risk communication about and management of different types of biotechnologies.

Life after Heart Transplantation

Progress in surgical technology and in postoperative therapy has remarkably increased life expectation after heart transplantation. Nevertheless, patients still show a resistance to resume a normal life after transplantation, for example, to return to work. In this study we assume that after surgery patients become risk averse because they achieve a positive frame of reference. Because of this propensity toward risk aversion, they withhold from engaging in behavior that their physical condition would allow them in principle. Coherent with this assumption we found that compared to the medical team patients overestimate the degree of risk for routine activities. The study also showed that the representation of risk by the patients could be captured by a dreadfulness factor and a voluntariness factor. Patients' risk judgments were strongly and specifically predicted by the perceived degree of dreadfulness of the activity and, to a lesser extent, by the perceived knowledge of the consequences. Implications for patient-physician communication were explored.

Mental representation of economic crisis in Italian and Swiss samples 1The authors would like to thank Maurizio Mistri for his help in the construction of items. This research was supported by a grant from the Italian Murst (ex 40%)

The content and structure of mental representation of economic crises were studied and the flexibility of the structure in different social contexts was tested. Italian and Swiss samples (Total N = 98) were compared with respect to their judgments as to how a series of concrete examples of events representing abstract indicators were relevant symptoms of economic crisis. Mental representations were derived using a cluster procedure. Results showed that the relevance of the indicators varied as a function of national context. The growth of unemployment was judged to be by far the most important symptom of an economic crisis but the Swiss sample judged bankruptcies as more symptomatic than Italians who considered inflation, raw material prices and external accounts to be more relevant. A different clustering structure was found for the two samples: the locations of unemployment and gross domestic production indicators were the main differences in representations.