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Smoking Status and Public Responses to Ambiguous Scientific Risk Evidence
Author(s) -
Viscusi W. Kip,
Magat Wesley A.,
Huber Joel
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
southern economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 2325-8012
pISSN - 0038-4038
DOI - 10.1002/j.2325-8012.1999.tb00246.x
Subject(s) - scientific evidence , divergence (linguistics) , risk assessment , psychology , public opinion , expert opinion , process (computing) , risk perception , actuarial science , medicine , computer science , business , political science , epistemology , perception , law , philosophy , linguistics , computer security , neuroscience , politics , operating system , intensive care medicine
Situations in which individuals receive information seldom involve scientific consensus over the level of the risk. When scientific experts disagree, people may process the information in an unpredictable manner. The original data presented here for environmental risk judgments indicate a tendency to place disproportionate weight on the high risk assessment, irrespective of its source, particularly when the experts disagree. Cigarette smokers differ in their risk information processing from nonsmokers in that they place less weight on the high risk judgment when there is a divergence in expert opinion. Consequently, they are more likely to simply average competing risk assessments.