How do people judge risks: availability heuristic, affect heuristic, or both?

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Applied
Thorsten PachurFlorian Steinmann

Abstract

How does the public reckon which risks to be concerned about? The availability heuristic and the affect heuristic are key accounts of how laypeople judge risks. Yet, these two accounts have never been systematically tested against each other, nor have their predictive powers been examined across different measures of the public's risk perception. In two studies, we gauged risk perception in student samples by employing three measures (frequency, value of a statistical life, and perceived risk) and by using a homogeneous (cancer) and a classic set of heterogeneous causes of death. Based on these judgments of risk, we tested precise models of the availability heuristic and the affect heuristic and different definitions of availability and affect. Overall, availability-by-recall, a heuristic that exploits people's direct experience of occurrences of risks in their social network, conformed to people's responses best. We also found direct experience to carry a high degree of ecological validity (and one that clearly surpasses that of affective information). However, the relative impact of affective information (as compared to availability) proved more pronounced in value-of-a-statistical-life and perceived-risk judgments than in ri...Continue Reading

Citations

Jan 30, 2014·PloS One·Thorsten PachurJeffrey R Stevens
Feb 13, 2016·Risk Analysis : an Official Publication of the Society for Risk Analysis·Craig W TrumboWayne H Schubert
Jul 3, 2013·Journal of Travel Medicine·Rosalie ZimmermannReto Nüesch
Nov 30, 2013·Risk Analysis : an Official Publication of the Society for Risk Analysis·Craig TrumboBridget Morrissey
Mar 1, 2014·Risk Analysis : an Official Publication of the Society for Risk Analysis·Michael Siegrist, Bernadette Sütterlin
Sep 4, 2015·The British Journal of Developmental Psychology·Marie GeurtenThierry Meulemans
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Jul 4, 2021·The Journals of Gerontology. Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences·Julia Nolte, Corinna E Löckenhoff

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