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The affect heuristic, mortality salience, and risk: Domain‐specific effects of a natural disaster on risk‐benefit perception
Author(s) -
Västfjäll Daniel,
Peters Ellen,
Slovic Paul
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/sjop.12166
Subject(s) - affect (linguistics) , risk perception , psychology , perception , salience (neuroscience) , population , natural disaster , social psychology , cognitive psychology , environmental health , medicine , geography , communication , neuroscience , meteorology
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.